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An experiment in teaching a language without relying on translation

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Re: An experiment in teaching a language without relying on translation

#51

Post by adrianN »

toto444 wrote: post #17
gryson wrote: post #12

But... why? Translation is not something to be avoided for the adult language learner. We should use every advantage at our disposal. You can spend hours trying to guess the meaning of a word through pictures and context (and not getting anywhere far), or you can spend a minute reading the translated meaning and then spend hours understanding it in context (and reinforcing it, and learning its semantics). I wonder if…

> But... why? I started it for two reasons. First there is close to no easy to read content when you begin learning Japanese and there is demand for such thing. The second reason is to see how far I can go like this. It is a sort of thought experiment like you say in your comment. I discovered after I started that Hans Ørberg something similar for Latin ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_%C3%98rberg ). His Lingua L…

I buy Japanese children's books from amazon.co.jp, but there are also the NHK Easy News. Normal textbooks also have simple texts. Tatoeba has a large number of Japanese sentences with audio and translations to various languages.

Re: An experiment in teaching a language without relying on translation

#52

Post by thaumasiotes »

Swizec wrote: post #33
tsimionescu wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that one problem that eventually happens with this approach, which is a problem I had with Duolingo as well, is that very soon after learning a few words you need to start learning basic grammar. In these approaches that don't explain the grammar at all, you need to spend effort pattern matching to pick up the right grammatical rules to construct your own sentences, and you are never sure that you're doing th…

> In these approaches that don't explain the grammar at all, you need to spend effort pattern matching to pick up the right grammatical rules to construct your own sentences, and you are never sure that you're doing the right thing. To be fair, you learn your first language by inference and don't start learning the rules until you're some 10 years into fluency. Even as late as high school we were taught grammatical r…

> To be fair, you learn your first language by inference and don't start learning the rules until you're some 10 years into fluency.

This isn't really a good way to think about it; if you're fluent, you have already learned all the rules.

A "rule" like "no one will take you seriously as a lawyer if you write 号, you must always write 日 instead" is a fact about the culture, not the language.

Re: An experiment in teaching a language without relying on translation

#53

Post by redis_mlc »

euske wrote: post #38

I've seen a plenty of "learn Japanese" sites, and always scratched my head wondering what their end goal are. The learning process should accomodate the end goals. Is that to watch Japanese anime without subtitles? To have a deep conversation with ordinary people? Or simply the language is too linguistically intriguing? (BTW, so many languages are just as intriguing as Japanese) To me, a Japanese native majoring in C…

> Is that to watch Japanese anime without subtitles?

20-30 years ago, Japan was an ascendant technological nation in which Americans were very interested. Japan had several dominant consumer brands and was considered an AI pioneer.

But Japan lost its way when transitioning from pre-Internet hardware products to "software with hardware."

So today the interest is probably about reading anime subtitles, or having a Japanese gf.

I studied Japanese in SV at the Jetro-related classes, and worked in Japan briefly.

https://www.jetro.go.jp/usa/topics/jetro-connects-japanese-s...

What's interesting is that although Japanese non-work culture is roughly opposite that of the West in many ways, it seems we share a "Protestant-like" or at least secular work ethic that is results-driven.

You can see that in WW2 - the Japanese Navy was able to build itself into a world power that was briefly equal to the US Navy, and the Battle of the Coral Sea was roughly a draw.

Where the cultural values differed was at the very top of leadership, and ultimately the US had aggressive, independent naval commanders, and Japan had Yamamoto (a rebel who couldn't communicate his plans effectively to traditionalists) and Admiral Nagumo (a traditional, hesitant commander who was both inflexible and unlucky - he refused to do a third wave at Pearl Harbor, and he thought the Battle of Midway was primarily intended to capture Midway!)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ch%C5%ABichi_Nagumo

Re: An experiment in teaching a language without relying on translation

#54

Post by rconti »

euske wrote: post #38

I've seen a plenty of "learn Japanese" sites, and always scratched my head wondering what their end goal are. The learning process should accomodate the end goals. Is that to watch Japanese anime without subtitles? To have a deep conversation with ordinary people? Or simply the language is too linguistically intriguing? (BTW, so many languages are just as intriguing as Japanese) To me, a Japanese native majoring in C…

It's an interesting question. I'm a native English speaker (American). I began learning French in school at age 11, and did so for 7 years, before taking a few years off, then minoring in it in college. Even now, another 15 years on, with little practice, I consider myself fluent; I haven't forgotten much and it's fairly easy to hold a conversation. That said, television and radio have always felt slightly out of my grasp; movies less so. It's the speed, and the context, and the slang.

Learning a language is so much easier when you're younger.

I also took a year of German in college, and know just enough to ask questions, the answers to which I will not understand.

I've used Duolingo to learn bits of languages before I travel. I would put this more in the "personal enrichment" category. A couple months of brief daily Norwegian lessons before a trip to Norway. It's interesting to be able to piece together bits of information from signs, advertisements, menus, etc. Certainly not something I could call useful, particularly in such an English-speaking country.

I've always heard Japanese is much harder for an American to learn than, say, French or Spanish. Given how little time American schools spend on languages, and how many years it takes to be truly "good" at even an "easy" foreign language, why bother at all? Especially as an adult, where the learning curve is so much steeper than it is for a child.

At the end of the day, I think it has to be about enjoying the process, enjoying learning, enjoying what you get out of even synthesizing small bits of information when you travel or encounter foreign media. Otherwise, with today's technology, there's simply no way that the average English- or Mandarin- speaking adult learning a foreign language (other than Mandarin or English!) makes a whole lot of sense, unless that person is planning to live in another country.

Re: An experiment in teaching a language without relying on translation

#55

Post by stordoff »

euske wrote: post #38

I've seen a plenty of "learn Japanese" sites, and always scratched my head wondering what their end goal are. The learning process should accomodate the end goals. Is that to watch Japanese anime without subtitles? To have a deep conversation with ordinary people? Or simply the language is too linguistically intriguing? (BTW, so many languages are just as intriguing as Japanese) To me, a Japanese native majoring in C…

Personally, I want to be able to read Japanese media (mostly games) that have no English release or at best have a slightly questionable fan translation. The games I'd already playing provide _a degree_ of passive immersion, as they often only have Japanese audio and leave background elements untranslated, which is useful and motivating. It'd also be nice to some that do have an English release in their native language. Were I not a native English speaker, I suspect I'd feel the same way about English. Mandarin may be more useful/practical in some sense, but I don't come across non-English or Japanese texts often, so it's not as immediately useful to me.

I'm not sure why the language is so seemingly popular, but I suspect the popularity of Japanese games and anime in the West is one of the factors.

Re: An experiment in teaching a language without relying on translation

#56

Post by Kwantuum »

gryson wrote: post #12

But... why? Translation is not something to be avoided for the adult language learner. We should use every advantage at our disposal. You can spend hours trying to guess the meaning of a word through pictures and context (and not getting anywhere far), or you can spend a minute reading the translated meaning and then spend hours understanding it in context (and reinforcing it, and learning its semantics). I wonder if…

> Spoiler: it takes children years and years of near-constant, directed input to acquire their native language to a high degree

You seem to be contrasting this with the implication that it doesn't take adults years of near consta

Re: An experiment in teaching a language without relying on translation

#57

Post by imtringued »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #13
mettamage wrote: post #3

I don't understand anything and I tried a bit, but IMO this is much more effort than normal. A friend of my confirmed you need to know hiragana. She has studied it a bit and could follow the lessons, whereas I couldn't (knowing next to nothing).

Well the good news is that the kana are really low hanging fruit. You can learn them in a day and as long as you continue learning Japanese you will be constantly exposed to them. There are only just over a hundred of them and, unlike English, they are only ever pronounced one way[0]. Kanji are significantly more effort, with 2k characters to learn and multiple pronunciations for each. Interestingly, while you will p…

It took me at least a month to learn all Hiragana + katakana using getkana and they only really stuck after I began learning vocabulary. Learning them in a day is impossible. You can look them up if you want to get started on day one but that is completely different from actually knowing the by heart.

Re: An experiment in teaching a language without relying on translation

#58

Post by jamil7 »

Xenograph wrote: post #40
henrikschroder wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just one more anecdote, but this is what turned me off from duolingo completely. You can't just learn words or sentences alone, you have to have at least some grammar in there. You need lists of prepositions and pronouns, and you need a little bit of at least simple rules for verbs and nouns. Yes, it's boring but otherwise you'll really struggle.

Not that I disagree necessarily, but to play devil's advocate: kids don't learn any formal grammar rules before they speak their first language fluently.

Well kind of depends what you mean. Kids do years of formal grammar in school here in Germany, the language is hard. Kids take a long time to pick up a language via immersion and they typically don’t need to express any complicated constructs. They also have all their needs met by a caregiver, I know what you’re getting at but it’s impractical for most adults to learn this way.

Re: An experiment in teaching a language without relying on translation

#59

Post by imtringued »

klipt wrote: post #14
pchap10k wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More or less that’s right. They’re a good step toward seeing pictographs as phonetic characters. When I first starting learning Japanese I took an intensive 7 week course. We learned Hiragana and Katakana in one week, though it took longer to really make that knowledge long term available. I forgot a lot of it after completing the course, but my first year living in Japan helped restore it all! Now my kids are learni…

From what I've read, spaced repetition like Anki is state of the art for memory intensive subjects like kanji/hanzi.

You have to mess around with plugins if you want to use Anki.

Learning Kanji is also really painful. I'm still only 75% done even though it has been a year already.

Re: An experiment in teaching a language without relying on translation

#60

Post by cyxxon »

Clewza313 wrote: post #42
henrikschroder wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just one more anecdote, but this is what turned me off from duolingo completely. You can't just learn words or sentences alone, you have to have at least some grammar in there. You need lists of prepositions and pronouns, and you need a little bit of at least simple rules for verbs and nouns. Yes, it's boring but otherwise you'll really struggle.

Many (but not all) Duolingo languages, eg Chinese, actually have basic grammar covered in the Tips section boxes before each lesson: https://www.duolingo.com/skill/zs/Existence/tips However, this feature is not really discoverable and often the main content that follows is only loosely if at all related.

Even worse, it is (or at least was) not available in all methods used to access the content. I think it is available on the web, where I started using Duolingo during a downtime at work, and when I later wanted to continue, I just did not find the button for it on the iOS app (or the other way around). That is pretty terrible for such a basic part of the learning experience.
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