The Daily Telegraph, a newspaper from some random, wind-swept island in the North Sea, has this really cool article by Nick Hornby about how to read. I find it interesting because it applies directly to Japanese study in particular and language study in general. A lot of people sneer at manga readers and anime watchers; they’re not “serious”…
Showing Up
by khatzumoto
OK. Everyone knows that quote by Woody Allen or whoever about showing up. You know, “70% of winning is showing up”. Well, Woody Allen, that daughter-dating scoundrel, lied to you. The truth is that “70% of winning is showing up” is a bunch of bull… …because, in fact, 100% OF WINNING IS SHOWING UP. I…
Chinese Project Notes 4: How I Watch Movies, Or How To Make Your Own Radio Play That You’ll Actually Understand
by khatzumoto
You may not know this from all my writing about drive and discipline, but I am actually a really lazy and fun-oriented guy. And that laziness shows in how I learned Japanese and in how I am learning Chinese. Here’s how I watch a movie: Get the Chinese version of a movie that I’ve seen…
Chinese Project Notes 5: Monodics
by khatzumoto
A lot of people have asked me “hey Khatzumoto, which monolingual Chinese dictionaries do you use?”. And I respond to them in comments, but no one gets to read comments. So here it is, a list of the monodics I currently use. [internet] 國語辭典簡編本 (The Abridged Mandarin Dictionary, designed for children, it has pictures and…
Chinese Project Notes 3: Environment-Building + The Laddering Method Reloaded
by khatzumoto
So, the Chinese Project is going really well. I made another shopping trip to my favorite Taiwanese online bookstore. These are new members of my Chinese media collection (except for 玩具總動員/Toy Story, which is an older member): So, most of what I have are comic books and Disney/Pixar DVDs in Chinese. I also have Chinese-dubbed…
On Input
by khatzumoto
Here is a really cool post about the need for input at bilingualmente. It’s right on the money with the problem of thinking in your base language instead of in your target language, and how to solve it. I was just discussing this with Momoko yesterday. Other than failing to systematically learn kanji in large quantity,…