How I Learned French in One Year
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How I Learned French in One Year
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Re: How I Learned French in One Year
#2From http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blog/about
"In June 2004, at the ripe old age of 21, all post-pubescent and supposedly past my mental/linguistic prime, I started learning Japanese. By September 2005, I had learned enough to read technical material, conduct business correspondence and job interviews in Japanese. By the next month, I landed a job as a software engineer at a large Japanese company in Tokyo"
Basically, his method involved constantly immersing himself in Japanese media.
Re: How I Learned French in One Year
#3From http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blog/about "In June 2004, at the ripe old age of 21, all post-pubescent and supposedly past my mental/linguistic prime, I started learning Japanese. By September 2005, I had learned enough to read technical material, conduct business correspondence and job interviews in Japanese. By the next month, I landed a job as a software engineer at a large Japanese company in Tokyo" Ba…
Oh man, I wish I could advance at such a pace. Sometimes I doubt these fast-learner stories, but I guess different people just have different abilities.
I lived in Tokyo for 2 years, studying Japanese full-time, and completed several courses in Finland before that. Speaking came pretty easy and I am quite fluent in normal conversation, but learning kanji has proven to be a real time-sink and a source of frustration, although at the same time I love them for their beauty. Also reading Japanese feels different than reading languages in the Latin alphabet, as the characters have an extra layer of meaning (not a huge difference, but helps to distinguish homonyms + create new kinds of puns / emphasis).
There are roughly 2000 kanji that you should know to be a high-school level reader. The latest test I took (http://www.speedanki.com) shows I know about 800. Reading a newspaper is not possible currently, as I would have to constantly look up kanji, and often the important words are the rarer ones.
But I will learn them. At this point it's an obsession, I'm not even sure why I need to know them, except to prove to myself that I can.
Re: How I Learned French in One Year
#4From http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blog/about "In June 2004, at the ripe old age of 21, all post-pubescent and supposedly past my mental/linguistic prime, I started learning Japanese. By September 2005, I had learned enough to read technical material, conduct business correspondence and job interviews in Japanese. By the next month, I landed a job as a software engineer at a large Japanese company in Tokyo" Ba…
Oh man, I wish I could advance at such a pace. Sometimes I doubt these fast-learner stories, but I guess different people just have different abilities. I lived in Tokyo for 2 years, studying Japanese full-time, and completed several courses in Finland before that. Speaking came pretty easy and I am quite fluent in normal conversation, but learning kanji has proven to be a real time-sink and a source of frustration,…
If you use Firefox, the gTranslate extension is pretty good for looking up words/phrases quickly. All you have to do is highlight the word, right click, and there's a translation menu item that has the translation. It might not be the best for individual characters, but it's quicker than going to the dictionary every five seconds.
Re: How I Learned French in One Year
#5From http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blog/about "In June 2004, at the ripe old age of 21, all post-pubescent and supposedly past my mental/linguistic prime, I started learning Japanese. By September 2005, I had learned enough to read technical material, conduct business correspondence and job interviews in Japanese. By the next month, I landed a job as a software engineer at a large Japanese company in Tokyo" Ba…
Oh man, I wish I could advance at such a pace. Sometimes I doubt these fast-learner stories, but I guess different people just have different abilities. I lived in Tokyo for 2 years, studying Japanese full-time, and completed several courses in Finland before that. Speaking came pretty easy and I am quite fluent in normal conversation, but learning kanji has proven to be a real time-sink and a source of frustration,…
Have you tried using Heisig's Remembering the Kanji?
Re: How I Learned French in One Year
#6The Peace Corps of my youth taught the volunteers to speak the new language by 3 months of total immersion, then threw them into the wild. My friends who had gone through the process said that they could get by, but it took a year to become totally fluent.
I picked up enough Portuguese to fumble along in Brazil by taking 40 hours of lessons from Berlitz, 2 hours per day twice a week, just me and the teacher. That was kind of the minimum to make continuous progress. Group classes are way less effective, and courses at the local JC are totally worthless. The only thing that counts is how much time you actually spend speaking.
It's expensive as hell, but I strongly recommend 100 hours of individual instruction before going off on your own in learning. It gives you a good feel for the pronunciation of the language. If you learn by reading but with the wrong pronunciation, it may take a long time to recover. The proof to me was when I was in rural northeastern Brazil. The person that I was haltingly talking to said that he could tell that I was from Rio by my accent. I wasnt, but my teacher was.
Re: How I Learned French in One Year
#7Language learning is such a VAST and ignored area in start-up community. I'm also learning French and while Rosseta Stone is the mainstream software it's practically a wasteland with small occasional gems like http://babbel.com ( which is very nice Adobe Flex application).
Anyone finding a quick and a fun way to learn a language will become an instant billionaire :)
But I guess it's the general problem of knowledge learning and is as old as the human race exist. Imagine building something that has a possibility of destroying the current concept of school! For now all we have is sci-fi stories about swallowing pills for instant learning ....
P.S. I wrote a little Adobe Air application for someone who likes to learn a language while listening to songs or watching youtube. You can search lyrics/save/translate and bookmark your videos. It's a just organizes the whole process. Have fun ! http://www.singandstudy.com
Re: How I Learned French in One Year
#8If you're planning to live in Quebec, then French skills are critical. Lots of points for immigration/selection, and things just aren't in English outside of Montreal. If, however, you're trying for someplace like Vancouver, French is less important.
I think various websites publish the skill set(s) the country and/or provinces are looking for. It's trivial for a US-ian to get work here, and it's a 3-6 month process for Europeans to do so (at least in software-related businesses). It also helps if you're young, single, ...
Re: How I Learned French in One Year
#9Earlier quoted context omitted.
Oh man, I wish I could advance at such a pace. Sometimes I doubt these fast-learner stories, but I guess different people just have different abilities. I lived in Tokyo for 2 years, studying Japanese full-time, and completed several courses in Finland before that. Speaking came pretty easy and I am quite fluent in normal conversation, but learning kanji has proven to be a real time-sink and a source of frustration,…
Have you tried using Heisig's Remembering the Kanji?
For those that don't know, the Heisig method is a very famous mnemonic method for remembering the kanji. According to some people with brains apparently wired differently than mine, you can learn all kanji in a few months with this method. The method starts with giving each compound part that appears in more complex characters an English language name. These names are then used to create stories that tie the more complex kanji together. After this you have English names for all characters. Then you go on to study their pronunciations.
Yes, I have seriously tried it. Maybe it works for some people. It's of course quite hard to recall why you really remember something, but in the 800 kanji I know according to the test, the vast majority I seemed to remember from seeing/using them in context while reading/writing Japanese. Mnemonics are an attractive thought, and I hope they do really work for some people. Personally I am a bit skeptical. My feeling now is that learning doesn't have to be brought up to conscious thought, but is something that happens naturally as you re-encounter things. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaced_repetition
If you'd like, you can combine these two things too. http://kanji.koohii.com/learnmore.php
Re: How I Learned French in One Year
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
Oh man, I wish I could advance at such a pace. Sometimes I doubt these fast-learner stories, but I guess different people just have different abilities. I lived in Tokyo for 2 years, studying Japanese full-time, and completed several courses in Finland before that. Speaking came pretty easy and I am quite fluent in normal conversation, but learning kanji has proven to be a real time-sink and a source of frustration,…
If you use Firefox, the gTranslate extension is pretty good for looking up words/phrases quickly. All you have to do is highlight the word, right click, and there's a translation menu item that has the translation. It might not be the best for individual characters, but it's quicker than going to the dictionary every five seconds.
http://www.rikai.com automatically displays popups for kanji as you hover your mouse over them. Here's a direct URL to browse the Japanese Slashdot with it: http://tr.im/ooJg
But what I really meant were dead-tree books and newspapers that I could read while not at the computer.