The Japanese project : What happend so far ?

En français
I haven't written anything about learning Japanese for a long time.
That just means that nothing has really changed since the last time.
For the moment I'm just reviewing the Kanjis. I give myself 12 more days to do that before starting the next step of the study. Of course I will not stop reviewing the Kanjis I already know and continue to learn more of them.
But if I want to be able to speak one day I really need to continue the learning process while learning the Kanjis.
I'm much more motivated now than before because I have a Japanese friend. And he really seems to believe that I will end up speaking Japanese. That really great.

Generally when you are learning a language (especially an Asian language), people thinks either that you are crazy or that you are going to give up in three weeks or that you will never speak it whatever you do because it's so "difficult" or ...
For example I have been listening to Korean all the time for nearly 11 months now, and someone recently told me : "You're still doing that ?" with a kind of "You are so stupid" looks. Of course I'm still doing that, how can I learn if I'm not "still" doing that. What the point of starting doing that if you just stop without achieving your goal ?.
What kind of stupid question was that anyway ?
Most of the time people don't understand "How you can do that to yourself ?"
I think it's a real misconception of the "that".
"That" is fun, "that" is not painful, "that" make you smarter, more open-minded and feel so great.
So why the hell would I stop listening to Korean ? Why would I stop learning my kanjis? I'm not nuts, they are just missing something really really great because it's known to be "difficult" so they don't try.
I tried and it's not so difficult !!!!
And you learn so much more than vocabulary and grammar, it's like having a all new world opening slowly before your eyes, just for you, because you deserve it for wish it so hard.
I'm getting a bit excited about silly comments I received, sorry about that.

So at the moment I'm reviewing my Kanjis with Heisig 1 and Anky. I have also started pimsleur to boost a bit my conversationnal skill. I'm not really expecting to be fluent after the tree months as some people pretend to be but it's a good start for learning vocabulary.
At the same time I started today to watch Dragon ball Z without subtitles. There are 291 episodes, I think that's gonna be fantastic for my listening comprehention.

So don't let people bother you, just stay and listen to the one that helps or at least don't say silly think that doesn't help pretending to be "just realistic". And work because that's the only way to succed.

The Japanese project : The ants

En français
Lately I was really feeling like an ants about my SRS repetitions.

And here is why, and the "possible" cure to test.

After my holidays in Iceland, like a good girl I went back to do my SRS repetitions.

The problem is there is so many (without speaking of my 3500 Korean SRS entries that mysteriously disappeared ... oups, what have I done) and reviewing is never as funny as learning new staff.
I just felt that I'm never going to finish it all.
That's what I'll like to call the ants syndrome.
Why ants ? Because ants are working all the time without stopping, their work never end, no notion of pleasure or fun.
So as usual I went to look for solutions, and the best place for Japanese learning problems is AllJapaneseAllTheTime, and the most recent article was apparently just made for me.
That is happening all the time on that blog, that's amazing. I just went there a second ago and saw that Khatzumoto uploads a file with Kanji that looks absolutely perfect for my review during my trip to Germany next week.
Thank you !!!!

Anyway the big thing is : my repetitions look like I can't finish them because actually I CAN'T finish them.
AHAHAH !!!
In fact there will be some more tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after that again, and a Huge mountain of them when I will come back from Germany, RIGHT ?!

So I decided to follow the advise and to time-box it.
That is fixing a time like for example 20 minutes.
After that, even if I'm not done with it, what the f..., I stop it watch an episode of 마이걸 and have a good laugh or what ever I want to do without culpabilities.

The "without culpabilities" is the most tricky part of it.
But in that case I don't get bored while doing the SRS repetitions so at least I do some.

I also applied the time-boxing in the lab at the same time and it's working very well.
My code is running for x minutes, I just have to wait for the results, for x minutes. But x is random so while it's running I'm getting bored.
Now I just run the code and decide to read a paper for 20 minutes no matter what. So if the code stop before it has to wait for me, that the reverse than before and so much better that way. If it hasn't stop I just go for 10 more reading minutes. If I don't finish the paper I will finish it later anyway.
So last week, not only did I the all code running I needed but I also read much more than any other week. And I felt great because I didn't get bored by doing nothing.

Now I just have to wait a bit to see if the process is going to be as good as for the kanji repetitions.

The Japanese project : End of learning the kanjis

En français
I haven't completely finish to learn my kanjis.
I have only less than 300 remaining so that's not too bad.
During my travel in Iceland I won't have time to review them at all so that's a bit scary.
I think that I will take two weeks for review and learn the remaining one's when I come back.
The good thing about the break is that in that case I will really know how much are already in my long terms memory.
I quite happy of the result so far even if I hoped to finish before leaving.
I didn't expected to be that busy in the lab and the preparation of the travel when I started the all thing.
Anyway the main result agrees with the project as I know now more kanjis than I ever did before.
But their is still a long way before being able to understand completely Japanese.
I will do some researches during the revision period to find the best next step to adopt and discuss that latter.

The Japanese project : Reviewing kanjis

En français
I finally end up reviewing my kanjis for the all week, last week.
I actually know 1483, so I think I will finish to learn them for Friday as planned.
I first thought that I was going to learn them all and review them during the last week but I'm happy that I reviewed them sooner. In fact I was a bit worried not to be able to really remember them as I was learning them so quickly. But it's working very well finally.
So now I just enjoy my new knowledge and learn more.

I find a new way to review them as well. That is watching Japanese animes or Korean dramas and movies with Chinese subtitles. At the moment it's Dragon Ball Z and 1%의 어떤것.


In the subtitles, you see lot of characters in a short period of time so that helps increasing your reading reaction speed.
The good thing about the Chinese subtitles is that there are only Chinese characters, no kana as with the Japanese subtitles. That's good because I don't know the kana yet.
That's bad because they are not use as in Japanese and the Chinese use more of them. What the guys are saying don't match the subtitles I mean.
But still it's really funny to watch something in a language you don't fully understand with subtitles that you can fully read.
And having fun is good for your education anyway. Even Sebastien enjoy watching them like that with me. So I have some translations and explanations to give. It's his participation to the learning of Japanese he says.
The other good point is to compare the Chinese subtitles with the English ones to learn more vocabulary.
My way of having fun probably seems weird but I really love it.

The Korean and Japanese projects : Lack of motivation

En français

Yesterday I experienced a big lack of motivation.
I think that there are severals causes.

The progression of the kanjis learning.
The "no"progression of Korean.
The lack of Korean background audio during the week-end.
The huge amount of work to do to reach fluency.

Learning the kanjis is taking a lot of time, a huge amount of time. When I started the Heisig method I expected it to be a bit difficult, easier than learning by using the visual memory but I never expected it to be that easy and interesting.
When I learned Chinese characters before it was by copying then again and again.
Of course I was breaking them into pieces sometimes but without any real organization.
Now I know about 1200 kanjis without that much of efforts. I mean, OK I'm spending something between 3 and 6 hours a days learning them, creating all the story including the elements, reviewing them on Anki and writing them 5 times to learn the stroke order and trying to have a nice writing style but it doesn't feel like a core at all.
And it's a bit scary to see it going that well when I have been struggling so much before.

Then the Korean problems. I spend so much time learning the kanjis as I was so excited by this new project that I really left the Korean in a corner. The only thing I really did what to listen to it all the time as usual. I have a enormous number of sentences waiting on Mnemosyne.
I didn't even read the wonderful web site full of manhwa I found earlier in the week.
So it's not getting that well, and as I really want to learn Korean, that's a bit depressing.
Now there is also the fact that I'm not as isolated during the week-end as I am during the week so I can't have Korean playing that much. And that feel a bit empty. Listening to Korean has became as essential as breathing or eating. If I don't get enough during a day I really feel extremely bad. It's kind of an addiction or something like that.

Then the 800 kanjis remaining as well as all the work to do afterward to master Japanese and Chinese as well as all the Korean work I still have to do, feel like a huge mountain.

So I what did I do to stop this lack of motivation and confidence ?
I decided to take a break.
A small one, until today. I'm not crazy, I don't want to ruin all the efforts and all the work I have been doing for so long.

So, no more kanjis, it's not going to hurt if I didn't learn some 100 new kanjis yesterday.
And today I'm just going to review what I have seen so far. So I will make sure that I really know them all and that it's not just a crazy idea.
Then I put the Korean back on, and loud, that made me feel nearly instantaneously better. I did some ironing, some cleaning, some knitting, meet some friends, watch the last episode of 내 이름은 김삼순.
And then I did what is probably the most important thing to get my motivation back. Instead of looking at what I don't know and have to do, I took a look at what I already know.

Few month ago, last September to be precise, the only thing I was able to say in Korean was 안녕하세요? and I wasn't even able to write my name properly.
Now I can write email to my friend using a dictionary, write everything I hear almost right, even if I'm not that confident about that due to my poor spelling even in my mother tongue, and say entire scene of 그 놈은 멋있었다 He Was Cool and 늑대의 유혹 Romance of Their Own ... by heart.
Few month ago I was only able to recall few basic kanjis. Now I know more than the half of the Remembering the kanjis book, I can recognize them in the street or on stuff and explain them to my friends and that's really cool.
So I just need to take it easy and learn more because learning languages is really a great thing and make you happy.

The Japanese project : Third part of Heisig's book

En français
I haven't written anything on this project for two weeks, sorry about that but it's because I had nothing very interesting to say.
Now I know more than the third of the book, around 800 kanjis. So if I keep up with 100 kanjis a day I should have a all week for reviewing before going on holidays. I'm really doing fine. I didn't think that it would be so simple, I tried the prehistorical method first when I was taking Chinese classes.
So 800 kanjis mean that I have been for a bit of time now in the third part of the book. That's also mean no more already fabricated stories. But that's not supposed to mean that it's more difficult, at the contrary I find it easier.
Of course you have to work a bit more on each character because you have to create your own story. But I find my own stories easier to remember.
Just one think, don't forget to write your story down. It will help you to review, especially that thinks will get more complicated if you change story each time you forgot a character and the time you used to create the story will be lost.
However, you still can change your story if you have problems to remember the kanji. It is possible that it's not vivid enough.

The Japanese project : Those kanjis you can't remember

En français

So now we have been studying those kanji for two weeks. And It is possible that we encounter some problems. That is kanji impossible to remember. OK, take a deep breath, take it easy, don't panic. Impossible kanji do not exist.
Now I'm gonna describe the reason why you keep forgetting the same kanji and how to fix the problems.

First I realized that it maybe a basic language problem. If you are studying the kanji from a second language (for example for me my Heisig is an English one), it is highly probable that your vocabulary isn't sufficient.
So first translate the word in your mother tongue, and if is not enough translate the story.
The great advantage is that you are not only going to learn a kanji but also new world in the language that is your basis to study it.

Second problem can be that the story don't talk to you at all. You can't remember it.
Take for example the kanji number 240 : 黙 , silence.
I don't have a clue about the "Hello, Darkness, my old friend..." song.
It doesn't really matter, in that case you just have to create your own story.
My neighbor's dog keep on barking all the time, when I'm trying to nap, so that I can never get any silence. I don't know the color of that dog but I can imagine that it is black. and that's it I will never forget 黙 again.

Now if I still forgot some of them, I not which they are while doing the SRS repetition. Then I make a copy of the page of the book, cut that part, stick it on cardboard, and draw picture to help remembering. That best thing is to use colors, even if grown up use to work in black and white, your memory will be help a lot by adding some color. The idea behind those flash cart is that you can carry them with you all the time and review severals time a day even if you have only few minutes.

Anyway don't stay stuck if you don't know all the kanji in a lesson, keep moving, it is better to know 80% of 500 kanji than only 100 completely on the top of your head.
Your SRS is going to remind them to you so often anyway that you can't possibly forget them for ever, be patient and work regularly.

Some more funny kanji images can be find here.

Read Japanese : Method and problems so far

En français
So far I have learn 203 Kanji. That's a bit less than I expected to learn during the first week.
So first I will explain why, then I will describe the new method I'm using. I think it's much more efficient.

Problems :

The main problem was to build my flash cart in the SRS Mnemosyne especially because it was the first time I was writing in Japanese on my computer.
So I had a lot of troubles and writing a single cart took me ages.
Hopefully I discover Anky. When I download it, it already had a set with the character in Heisig order The second problem was to remember the stroke order, because I was just reading the book and reviewing with the SRS.

The method :

First I read 1 chapter or so in Heisig
Then I review them with Anky.
Then I write them 5 or 10 times leaving space to be able to copy them more if I forgot.
And that's it. They enter my head that easily.

Before I start I was thinking it was possible and probably not as difficult as people where saying.
Of course I learned a bit of character with the school method, that was OK, but not enough to them to stay in my brain for a long time if I don't review them constantly.
Now with this method it really seems that I can learn them all, for severals reasons :
- It's funny
- Each time I forgot a character Anki is gonna remind it to me.
- I see the character using three different methods just in the learning process.

So even if I waste a bit of time in the beginning, I'm sure I can make it.

New Challenge : Read Japanese

En français
Have you ever been to the Asian supermarket and been frustrated because you were unable to read ? Have you ever looked at something the look good but be scared of trying it because you didn't understand what it was ? Have you ever wander what is it inside it's good looking manga, except the pictures ?

Me too, but I'm not going to wander anymore ... I had enough.

So here is the deal, on the 21st of June I'm going to Iceland, but before the plane take off I'm gonna be able to read Japanese.
Not completely, I'm just going to learn the meaning of 2042 Kanji.

Why ?
Because I think it's a good place to start to have a basic knowledge of Chinese characters.
I decided to start with Japanese first because there is less characters in Japanese than in Chinese and the Kanji give also a good start to the traditional Chinese characters and I have the Heisig book.
When I'm done with that, we will see but the idea so far is to learn the different phonetics , that is Japanese, Mandarin Chinese, Cantonese and of course Korean.
I don't know yet if I'm going to do that one by one or all at the same time, I better deal with that later.

See more in The Japanese project.
So let get started and Aja aja fighting !!!