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Sunday, September 14, 2008

The Japanese project : Snails

En français
After the ants syndrome, it occurs to me that I've got an other animal like decease, let's call it the Snails syndrome.
The thing is : I want to speak Korean, I want to speak Japanese, I want to be the best atomic physicist ever, I want to play violin like Yehudi Menuhin, I want to skate like Surya Bonaly (she is the best ever)....
And I want it now... (man some of those are not even realistic ...) I already can hear people say : What crazy thing is she again going to invent ?

The question is if you throw balls after balls after balls to a basket, or throw arrows after arrows after arrows to a target, how much are you gonna score ?
That can work if you are Michael Jordan or Robin Wood, alright... but what if you are just yourself ?
You throw 60 you score 1, they throw 60 they score 58, (ok, everybody can make mistake)
The thing is I want it now, so I do it really really quickly.
Read the heisig book in two weeks and ask yourself how much you can remember...
Those guys concentrate, they don't throw the balls or the arrows, they concentrate for each single one of them...
That's why I say I got the Snails syndrome, because I'm doing it so fast that at the end I need to do it again and again and again because I wasn't doing it properly, so I'm as "fast" as a snail. Just because I'm always so impatient. Of course you need repetitions to learn something, a lot of repetitions, but you need to do them intelligently.
I think this decease is going to be more difficult to cure than the ants syndrome. And I think that the only way to cure myself forever is to learn all those kanjis properly because that's the most obvious goal.
There are a fix amount of them (you can always can fine more, but let's say that we can chose a fix amount at the beginning) so the end, the target is really obvious, when I'll know them all, I will know it.
And the only way to know them all is to take it slowly to be able to memorize and remember.
So I'm going to take a big test to figure out how much I already know learning as a snail and then learn whose I don't slowly, to make sure I will be faster than a snail.
By the way I got nothing against snails, they are really kind of cute !!!

4 comments:

  1. So after the test I know 610 kanjis, which is a bit less than a third of what I'm supposed to know. I was expecting worse. Most of those I know are the first I learned, which seems normal as I reviewed them more.
    now I just have to work.

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  2. quite good though. Maybe you can try to use these words you know to make few sentences. I think it will also help you not only to review words but also really use the language at the same time in the enviornment where the language is not used.

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  3. Whatta blog! wierd sync here. My friends call me crazy cause i being watching films like chocolate,Death Note,Virgin Ssnow and anime to learn jap. Being 50 I just discover Manga, Cosplay and asian pop n rock... and somehow i am trapped there..

    Your blog shows a great 600 kanji level.. and I, far away on age and knowledge,and on the other side of the globe, enjoy reading your descriptions and ideas... funny if you think you are starting to climb the mountain, and I am descending from the other side.. he he! .. and you are the sensei and i am the ignorant... life is great!

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  4. Hi, Thanks for the comment. At the moment I really know 600 kanjis the problem is that I'm a bit slow at learning the rest of them at the moment. Too much things going on around me I supposed.
    I think that's great for you to learn Japanese, don't let people around you discourage you. That's probably the most difficult part about learning a new language, much more than the language itself.
    I'll try to write on the hiragana soon.

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