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How we invented new ways to teach Japanese

making.duolingo.com

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Re: How we invented new ways to teach Japanese

#111

Post by wccrawford »

stevekemp wrote: post #39
cantrevealname wrote: post #15

I'm not criticizing Duolingo, but I'm wondering if language apps are like gym memberships -- people sign up enthusiastically but after the first month, 90% don't or can't continue. Learning a new language as an adult is an incredibly difficult undertaking; much more so than persevering with the gym. The dropout rate must be huge.

I suspect it depends on why you're learning. As you say learning languages is hard, especially as an adult. I couldn't imagine learning a language for "fun", but I know others do. I can easily imagine a lot of them dropping-out and giving up, once they've either learned enough to be useful or decided it is not for them. But me? I've moved from Scotland to Finland. I'm very slowly learning the language. I don't expect…

I've been learning Japanese for fun for like 10 years now.

IMO, you have to have a reason for the language. Mine is that I wanted to read and watch anime/manga/tv/books/games that weren't being translated. Of course, these days they're all being translated faster than I can read them. But it was enough to get started, and I definitely enjoy them more than if I didn't know the original Japanese, too.

But I've tried to learn other languages that I don't have a use for, and I've found it nearly impossible. There just isn't enough motivation.

Re: How we invented new ways to teach Japanese

#112

Post by xiaomai »

xiaomai wrote: post #107
baby wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still wish Duolingo would make a course on Chinese :( Currently my favorite app is "Decipher Chinese". I read one story a day, save words I want to remember and get quizzed on them periodically.

I also use and enjoy Decipher Chinese. Another thing I would recommend is reading the books posted at https://www.reddit.com/r/chinesebookclub/ . It's really difficult at first but I find that reading actual Chinese books (with frequent word lookups in Pleco) has helped me improve my Chinese rapidly. (I don't get through the books in a month... I'm actually only 70% through the first one I picked up several months ag…

Actually another service I would recommend if you want to work on your listening comprehension is http://www.fluentu.com/. They take various clips (music videos / dramas / youtube shows) and subtitle them in a slick player (you can add vocab words straight from the videos).

Re: How we invented new ways to teach Japanese

#113

Post by blipmusic »

panglott wrote: post #58

"To show just how complex this can get, let’s take a simple English phrase – “I love you” – and dissect the many ways in which it can be said in Japanese. Spoiler alert: it’s not such a simple phrase in Japanese. One of our course contributors, Sho, estimated and found that there can actually be as many as 248,026 ways to say “I love you” in Japanese!" These kind statistics are a kind of lie in themselves. You can sa…

It can be just as simple in Japanese as in English, and just as complex. They refer to ways of being implicit + grammatically encoded social deixis, which Japanese is good at (not exclusive to Japanese, though). Grammatically it's quite covert.

But on the whole, no. Just no. I think what's said in the article on this is bullshit. As for wa/ga, one can not necessarily replace the other, so you'd lose a few permutations on that alone. Also, there are more personal pronouns to choose from if that's the game.

I also did not know that just because speech level is grammatically encoded in Japanese, one is not allowed to generate similar meaning in other languages.

Or rather: I'm sure I can find 248,026 ways to say "I love you" in some other language as well.

What is it with Japanese that triggers this kind of ignorance and Sapir-Whorf-ism...?

Re: How we invented new ways to teach Japanese

#114

Post by corey_moncure »

neves wrote: post #99

I've been told by a friend of mine that speaks Japanese that the most difficult aspect is that how you speak changes due the social setting. It's not just the syntax, you must learn how to speak in each different situation. Here is Richard Feynman talking about the same problem: While in Kyoto I tried to learn Japanese with a vengeance. I worked much harder at it, and got to a point where I could go around in taxis a…

This is a very salient point on the difficulty and nature of Japanese.

Japanese language is very tightly integrated with Japanese society, to the extent that I would cheekily argue it doesn't even count as speaking Japanese outside of the context of a Japanese social setting or structure.

To elaborate on your point regarding the proliferation of vocabulary from honorific synonyms, consider how much of the grammatical gamut is wrapped up in identifying the speaker's relationship with the listener. Who is the in-group? Who is the out-group? Is the speaker a man or woman? What is the relative social position of the speaker and listener? Is the utterance written or spoken?

Japanese is a language that identifies the answers to all of these questions with explicit grammar markers, while omitting number, case, conjugation, and employs only two tenses (realis and irrealis).

Learning Japanese in a classroom outside of Japan, or heaven forfend, through individual study alone, is an awkward and disconnected experience, since there is scarce opportunity to practice the major components of Japanese grammar in a real way.

Also kanji.

Re: How we invented new ways to teach Japanese

#115

Post by uberstuber »

wccrawford wrote: post #103
neves wrote: post #99

I've been told by a friend of mine that speaks Japanese that the most difficult aspect is that how you speak changes due the social setting. It's not just the syntax, you must learn how to speak in each different situation. Here is Richard Feynman talking about the same problem: While in Kyoto I tried to learn Japanese with a vengeance. I worked much harder at it, and got to a point where I could go around in taxis a…

I'm going to disagree with your friend. The hardest part of Japanese is reading it. You can train all that social stuff through usage and watching a lot of TV. But reading? It's a nightmare. The simple elementary school stuff isn't hard. But the highschool and college-level stuff? Ugh. Thousands of characters with multiple pronunciations each, sometimes with very tiny differences between them.

Heisig's book for recognizing characters worked well for me.

Picking the right pronunciation on the other hand...ends up being totally reliant on if I know the vocab word or not.

Re: How we invented new ways to teach Japanese

#116

Post by voidz »

reustle wrote: post #29

I've been learning japanese (and living in japan) for the past few months, and tried out duolingos new course when they released it yesterday. I've used quite a few different apps and books, and I must say I was pretty unimpressed. Their lessons give very little info on what you're learning, and with things like kanji it only teaches you the sound and not the meaning. I will experiment with it a bit more, but I've al…

Thanks. I recently purchased the Human Japanese app, and I took a 2 year subscription on japanesepod101.com. I wasn't sure whether duolingos would have been a better choice. Probably not. But I'm still happy to have read your message. I'll stick to the two tools I've paid for.

Re: How we invented new ways to teach Japanese

#117

Post by Naritai »

panglott wrote: post #106
Naritai wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems like a modern version of the old claim "Inuit have 100+ words for snow". I've found that's true for most of the claims of "X language has Y words for concept Z!!!" Inevitably it comes down to one of two things: -language X has a slightly different concept of 'word' than English does (such as allowing for conjugations to refer to past or future states) -The english word is question has a variety of context…

It's a widely known myth, but I'm pretty sure that Inuit absolutely has 100+ words for snow: it's just that's a meaningless and unsurprising assertion. The Inuit languages are polysynthetic and can say in a word what European languages need a sentence for, so Inuit can sidestep Zipf's law on word frequency. But also, English has plenty of words for snow, here's 50: https://www.thoughtco.com/snow-terms-types-3010117

Yes, I think we agree. Thank you for the additional info / detail.

Re: How we invented new ways to teach Japanese

#118

Post by csa »

neves wrote: post #99

I've been told by a friend of mine that speaks Japanese that the most difficult aspect is that how you speak changes due the social setting. It's not just the syntax, you must learn how to speak in each different situation. Here is Richard Feynman talking about the same problem: While in Kyoto I tried to learn Japanese with a vengeance. I worked much harder at it, and got to a point where I could go around in taxis a…

Regarding the Feynman quote:

1. It is told in a sensationalist way that either is or is close to being orientalism. I believe Feynman was known for his story-telling skills (sometimes with some hyperbole for effect), and I think this case is no different.

2. That said, for someone doing a crash course in Japanese, I can see how this can come across as being confusing... but it's not terribly complicated for a smart person like Feynman. Maybe the teacher wasn't particularly skilled...

3. That said, if Japanese is learned in context over some period of time, using the wrong verb form in these contexts just intuitively sounds wrong to the point that it makes me (and others) reflexively wince.

4. That said, the deeper levels of keigo (not the minor stuff mentioned by Feynman) can actually be challenging to learn, even for Japanese people. This is mainly because the content is unfamiliar since the contexts are not experienced regularly (or ever)... until they are, then the keigo becomes natural.

5. That said, someone like Feynman (and in fact most westerners) would get a pass for using any form of "see" if it is in Japanese. Most Japanese I know have low expectations (rightly or wrongly) for foreigners speaking Japanese, so using the wrong verb form typically doesn't even raise an eyebrow.

Re: How we invented new ways to teach Japanese

#119

Post by voidz »

jim-jim-jim wrote: post #43
reustle wrote: post #29

I've been learning japanese (and living in japan) for the past few months, and tried out duolingos new course when they released it yesterday. I've used quite a few different apps and books, and I must say I was pretty unimpressed. Their lessons give very little info on what you're learning, and with things like kanji it only teaches you the sound and not the meaning. I will experiment with it a bit more, but I've al…

> with things like kanji it only teaches you the sound and not the meaning Damn, that's precisely the opposite of how you should learn them. My Japanese ability pretty much exploded after I set aside two months to study the kanji divorced from their readings with James Heisig's method. Totally worth it. The readings come with time.

Who is James Heisig, and what is his method? I'd like my Japanese ability to explode too!

Re: How we invented new ways to teach Japanese

#120

Post by voidz »

mattnumbe wrote: post #26
cantrevealname wrote: post #15

I'm not criticizing Duolingo, but I'm wondering if language apps are like gym memberships -- people sign up enthusiastically but after the first month, 90% don't or can't continue. Learning a new language as an adult is an incredibly difficult undertaking; much more so than persevering with the gym. The dropout rate must be huge.

I've been living, working, studying, playing in Japan for the last 8 years. I came here with no knowledge of the language (except "ohayou" because of that Sesame Street where Big Bird goes to Japan). Learning katakana and hiragana took an afternoon of riding the train and reading signs. The first 3 years I didn't really study much, but talking to old men in bars and spending time in the hospital boosted my communicat…

Where are those coupons? :-)
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