Comments on: Desires and Decisions

By: Lucas de Sousa

Lucas de Sousa — Mon, 01 May 2017 03:14:29 +0000

Man, I’m brazilian, I’ve gone to english classes for four years, and it really helped me to learn english… I’m kidding! I literally lived english for all that time, when I was on school, in my home, I watched english videos, and in the ending of the english classes (after the four years), the teacher was asking for help with studants who “failed” in the last test… and the teacher was a natural american. I never really understood how could I learn english and my classmates couldn’t until I found this website. Well, I’m writing all that “book”to tell you that I don’t even know if I’m going to learn japanese, but you are really giving me instructions for life. I am sharing that idea of “planners” and “players” with all my friends and it’s really helping them. So I thank you, for me and for all of them. You are a boss! (Oh, and sorry for the bad english writing).

Muito obrigado por tudo e até mais! (“Thank you for everything and bye” in brazilian portuguese)

By: iko

iko — Sat, 16 Jul 2016 01:23:47 +0000

hi khatz,
yr jap friend know how to learn english and you have shown them everything but still they would not do it. here is the reason the voice in their head is telling them otherwise. The voice is not their choice and they are not choosing. They are all not choosing but just reacting to everything in their daily life. They are just following their voice in their heads and not learning

By: rootabega

rootabega — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 01:48:39 +0000

Not sure if this the right place to leave my first post, but I felt it’s time to pipe up after lurking for years. My decision to learn Japanese was a confluence of fun and oh, f**k me. Allow me to explain. A few years back, I found myself watching more and more Japanese films, particularly older ones. Eventually, I started to feel a little foolish for not being to understand a single word of a language I was hearing, thanks to my movie addiction, on a daily basis. Around the same time, the doc fed me the results of a MRI scan, which indicated a had a nice-sized little hole in my noggin, and wasted no time informing me, “Use it or lose it.” Apparently, I was a shoe-in for the ol’ alzheimers unless I subjected my brain to some vigorous daily exercise – like for the rest of my life. My memory was already subpar, cognitive deficits galore, too challenging for me to sit classes, not to mention killer fatigue. Despite all this, I decided to seriously start learning Japanese. Oh, it takes me much, much longer than most language students to catch onto things, but with sheer persistence I’ve made one small gain after another. No matter how many times that rock called Japanese rolls back on me, I keep rolling it up that hill. It took me five years before I wrote my first kanji kentei (only level 10), but I passed with a nearly perfect score. I was so nervous, my hand could barely move to write, but my god, I did it. Now I am studying for level 9. I will keep going as long as I can draw breath.
Khatzumoto’s philosophy of AJATT has been a huge influence on me. Thank you, Khatzumoto!

By: You’re Not A “Learner”, You’re A Logistics Officer | AJATT | All Japanese All The Time

Thu, 03 Feb 2011 09:16:42 +0000

[…] Simply wanting to get good at [= get used to] Japanese doesn’t directly result in getting good at it. What does? Creating and maintaining local physical environments does. Because local physical environments tend to overpower “outcome desires” when it comes to the immediate causes of behavior. Most of the time, you sit in the chair that’s there, not in the chair that should be there or that you wish were there. Mmm…there are some massive logical holes in this argument, but hopefully you get what I’m getting at. […]

By: AJATT Plus » 夢と決断

AJATT Plus » 夢と決断 — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 15:03:57 +0000

[…] ★元ネタ：Desires and Decisions ★LARDに就いて Join the forum discussion on this post […]

By: 星空

星空 — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 01:15:01 +0000

For your nakama that say they want to learn English and complain about it:
if you want to blame someone for all the complications of English, blame either Shakespeare or the French. Sharks’ beard made up so many words it’s not funny. It’s one of his life’s accomplishments (along w/ 33+ plays that need some help with their plots, but I won’t go there…). It was the French that gave us “café” [WITH AN ACCENT] & “bureau” [eau= long o?! just who are you kidding?!] it was also the franks that imported all that Latin. ah, The romance languages. 大嫌いのよ、特にラテン語。あっ　痛みが我（われ）を殺すだろうな。我は今、シセロにもう一つ死を死なせたいんだよ。(I also begin to ponder why MS Word must have an accent in cafe but refuses to allow those double dot thingies {i can’t remember how to spell it} in “nice german words” like “doppelganger” and “haagen-dazs”. 　なんでもない。I digress.)

What annoys me more is bastardization of foreign words. I have big issues with “kah-mih-kah-zee” and “hawn-choh” if you catch my drift. It’s 神風＆本長　for goodness’ sake!!!! “イングリシ”もとても大嫌いなんです。音は違うなら。もう一つ闡明し方　（せんめいしかた）を考え付きません　（かんがえつきません）。　

我のしょうようを失礼しました。　m(_ _)m

By: Francis

Francis — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 22:01:22 +0000

You know the funny thing is, I think I only got this far into Japanese because I decided to declare it as my major my first year into college. After that, I never felt as discouraged or wanting to quit as my other classmates probably because I decided to commit four years to it and it just became something that I did, not HAAAAAAVE to do.

By: All Japanese All The Time Dot Com: How to learn Japanese. On your own, having fun and to fluency. » Unrealistic Expectations That You Need To Stop Having

Sun, 24 May 2009 15:10:21 +0000

[…] not following her dreams, but barring severe physical disabilities, if you really wanted to, if it mattered enough to you, you could do it. Remember: most people drastically overestimate what they can get done in 2 days […]

By: Jonathan Mahoney

Jonathan Mahoney — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 19:47:04 +0000

That’s the spirit Halcyon. I was so close to dropping out of “school” because I wasn’t learning hardly anything. I ended up finishing it off because by the time they’d let me stop going I only have about a year left but, what an inefficient use of time. My children certainly won’t be going to public school, not in North America at least.

By: Motivation to Learn | Dumb Otaku

Motivation to Learn | Dumb Otaku — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 02:22:37 +0000

[…] specifically got to one post he made, desires and decisions, and while his post was a rehash of a lot of cliche’s, they are cliche’s because they […]

By: Halcyon

Halcyon — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 05:36:35 +0000

People have so much more potential than they give themselves credit for and I’m generally amazed at how lazy and indifferent 80% of them are. First of all, I go to high school. As you know, traditional schooling neither fosters an appreciation for good education and rarely gives one. When I tell other kids that I don’t have cable TV they tell me “omg wtf do you do with your life?!” I used to respond to that question with “learn Japanese”, but judging from the blank stares that this incurred, I might have well have said “cull butterbur from the polyglot nation of San Francisco”. I’ve since switched to the more colloquial “learn shit” (which still comes across as a radical notion) .

So yes, this is more a rant of me being fed up with the anti-intellectual high school culture. But what frustrates me is that people don’t know what I and what you know. Instead they listen to teachers. Don’t even get me started about the education system.

By: All Japanese All The Time Dot Com: How to learn Japanese. On your own, having fun and to fluency. » What It Takes To Be Great 2: AJATT and Malcolm McDowell’s Outliers…wait…

Fri, 12 Dec 2008 13:46:48 +0000

[…] I haven’t read the book yet; I’ll probably wait for the Janslation. But I’m already loving what I read about it in the The Guardian (via this post by Golem): “If you put together the stories of hockey players and the Beatles and Bill Joy and Bill Gates, I think we get a more complete picture of the path to success. Joy, Gates and the Beatles are all undeniably talented…that “talent”, however, was something other than an innate aptitude for music or maths. It was desire.” […]

By: JDog

JDog — Sun, 20 May 2007 01:53:34 +0000

Doh! OK, I was typing the URL in wrong. Thanks for the link.

By: khatzumoto

khatzumoto — Sat, 19 May 2007 16:19:09 +0000

Hey JDog: comments feed here: /comments/feed/

By: khatzumoto

khatzumoto — Sat, 19 May 2007 16:18:22 +0000

Thanks, uberstuber! I’ll stop losing sleep over it ;).

By: JDog

JDog — Fri, 18 May 2007 15:49:23 +0000

Sorry for this off-topic post, but since there is no place I know of to put generic posts, I thought I’d start here. Is there any way on AJATT to see the comments that YOU (the user) have posted and where they are? I get lost in trying to remember which posts I’ve commented on and where they got “filed” after they were taken out of the “Latest Stuff” section. Upon Googling I discovered a comments feed a while ago, but it looks like you made that unaccessible now, Khatz?

By: uberstuber

uberstuber — Wed, 16 May 2007 23:28:10 +0000

There is no try.

I think everybody runs into these kind of people, in all aspects of life. Yes it’s annoying, but all we can do is try.

Don’t let people discourage you, for all of the people who dismiss your advice there are those few who really are appreciative of your work.

がんばって！

By: Blogcheck: "Desires and Decisions" « bilingually | bilingualmente

Blogcheck: "Desires and Decisions" « bilingually | bilingualmente — Wed, 16 May 2007 14:46:30 +0000

[…] Posted by Lingo on May 16th, 2007 Another inspirational (and introspective) post by K-man on AJATT. Those who have the skills didn’t just want to be good, they decided to be good. Want or decide–one is a wish, the other is a choice. One can get crushed, forgotten and swept away by the hectic business of everyday life; the other is inevitable–it sweeps everything out of its path, it crushes, avoids or otherwise overcomes obstacles. […]