Anyways, that’s my input in the matter. Japanese gets more fun each day!

this has nothign to do with this but,

how do you rip the audio from a dvd to your computer?

because I want the audio from all my DVDs onto my iPod for listening when doing other things.

thanks much. =]
oliver

www.bookmooch.com is a free book exchange program. Basically you get rid of books you have and get books you want. Everyone pays outgoing shipping (about $2.50), no one pays incoming shipping. For every book you send out, you can get a book in.

You can search for books by language, so I just search for books in Japanese. I’ve gotten 4 different mangas. I don’t read manga in English, so I don’t really care what I’m reading in Japanese. I look up the books to see what they’re about and if it’s not too sci-fi-y then I’ll mooch it. It’s pretty sweet.

Also, check out ebay. There’s lots of Japanese books on there, especially kids books.

Wan Zafran,

On the point of avoiding thinking in your native langauge, I recall hearing from another that that is one of the major reasons why for adults the Antimoon/AJATT method is supposed to not work. I personally do not buy this argument, but the other person said that through this method, as an adult, you will either impose a meaning from an equivalent word or phrase from your native language on a word or phrase in the target language, or you will remain eternally clueless as to the meaning of that word or phrase. When I told them that grammar books give lots of explanations in your native language and not target language, they responded saying, “Yes, but you will have the correct meaning, unlike what you would impose from your native language.” I also told them that a necessary part of immerson is hearing the sentences all in the target language and they responded saying that it doesn’t matter, since it would all be one big fog anyway. I told them that gradually as time goes on, the fog clears, and I’ve checked my interpretations of the meanings of various words (that I got simply from watching/listening/reading, not by looking it up in a monolingual/bilingual dictionary) and generally they say that my interpretations of those words were correct.

The person has yet to respond and has not done so for quite a while.

I think defeatism is so endemic that people are willing to try the methods that seem more socially correct, like the-go-to-school-to-hear-translations-from-your-native-language-and-grammar-that-works-best-with-your-native-language’s-grammar-explained-in-your-native-language-so-you-can-grind-out-sentences-from-that-because-as-we-all-know-you-are-an-adult-therefore-you-can-never-understand-from-reading-or-listening-no-matter-how-much-you-do-for-how-long-or-what-space-of-time-so-quit-being-facetious-and-who-cares-if-you-can’t-understand-the-average-monolingual-native-speaker’s-response-because-they’re-bigots-for-not-knowing-how-to-deal-with-foreigners-anyway method. But seriously, the sentences that I learned in school always seemed to be rare finds in the actual things I listen to/read. In other words, I learned a whole bunch of sentences from school and then I set to read actual Japanese and I understand barely any of it–here and there I can find one I learned in school, but on the whole the Japanese themselves use completely different ways of writing.

But I find that understanding becomes easier as time goes on and so I will continue this method.

I’m in Japan presently, though I will return home on the 9th and I find that I can understand the things people say better, though not perfectly and I still get taken by surprise. My accent is thick though still, and I try to avoid speaking and when I get home I’m going to return to another self-imposed silent period that I hope will help followed by more close and intense practice to sound like a native speaker. As a child I was hyperlexic and though I could read very well, I found it difficult to understand spoken speech. Because of that, I expect that it would probably take longer for my listening skills to kick in than the average person, so it is a weak spot that I am working on getting caught up in.

Thank you Khatzumoto and Antimoon for this common-sensical method that I had some vague idea of being the thing I should do before I even heard of it. Thank you. ^_^

it took me about two years.
-though I didn’t follow your method exactly I followed the main points
“sentences”- I didn’t input them into any SRS I just read and read some more and read some more. which gave me input of well over 10,000 sentences I just didn’t have to take the time putting them into my SRS, and instead of reviewing my SRS, I read some more.

anyway cheers =]

“Let 100 flowers bloom.” (Khatz)

and…

“Let a hundred flowers bloom, let a hundred schools of thought contend. ” (Mao Tse Tung – prior to unleashing the Cultural Revolution and stomping on his opponents).

Khatz, have you immersed yourself in Chinese to the extent of adding Mao’s ‘Little Red Book’ to your reading list 🙂

One thing I’m afraid of happening, something which hasn’t actually happened yet, is people going “I can’t learn in such a short time because I can’t take the heat”…I call that weakness in the sense of being a wuss-pot [hmmm…that was redundant…]. For the record, no one here has been a wuss-pot, no-one has been whining. But I’m just deathly afraid of anything that acts as a portal to those ideas, ideas that permit just half-a$$edness, you know? Probably because I’ve been a very big whiner myself, so I find the whole whining deal very distasteful…It’s at the base of people spending, you know years “studying” a language with nothing to show for it: having been in that position I can attest to how pathetic the whole thing is. There is no good reason for it. Dragging ones feet, underachievement…theres’s no reason for it. Not that anyone here but me has been an underachiever. I guess I’m just concerned about some kind of slippery slope into mediocrity, and some kind of decision that “only certain people can do X”, that kind of self-imposed elitism really grates on me, personally. These are the bad attitudes, the unexamined decisions, the unconquered vices that are at the base of most people’s language learning problems, so I’m just wary of things that even seem to hint at those attitudes.

I’m usually not one to suggest distasteful things (I’m not, really), but…maybe this uncomfortable period is something to just buckle down and ride through? It won’t last forever, like I said Japanese becomes a habit — eventually you just do it because it’s what you do. It may well be a matter of using willpower until a new habit is formed (at which point willpower is no longer needed). And while on the subject of willpower, I think it actually takes LESS willpower to do Japanese all the time, than to do Japanese most of the time. At some point if you want to get to your destination in time you may just have to run there and darn the pain and darn the excuses and darn the consequences…if your life were in danger you would figure something out by hook or by crook, and when it comes to a relatively large project like learning a language, that same moment-to-moment, what’s the word — force, impetus, drive… — can be very useful and can be applied quite easily. The buck has to stop somewhere, right? Better here and now than later, because let me tell you — regret is a good deal more painful than temporary discomfort. You realize that a

LoL…well that was negative 🙂 !! But sometimes…you just have to get raw, man.

Man, I really need to find a Japanese forum to spend my time arguing on. (And no one say 2ch. That is such a mess to navigate through!)

Just do whatever is fun. I find it hard to fathom how it could be that physically distasteful to have 100% target language input since it is what we did as kids…but that may just be a lack of imagination on my part…if it can’t be helped then it can’t be helped. People may well just be different in that sense. I would advise you to TRY 100% 24/7/365 input in some form, but if you need silence, you need silence [some people can’t sleep with it…other people need meditative time during the day…whatever].

I mean…stops occur naturally for most people (I lived in the US; I had to handle business in English at times), so…it would seem to me that that would provide enough time off iff such time off is in fact necessary. But…I mean, if you spend 15 waking hours doing Japanese and you intentionally and voluntarily (out of active desire as opposed to necessity) give up 1 hour to something else, I’m sure you’re still doing fine.

Let 100 flowers bloom. Let everyone go figure out their own deal. I’m going to stick to my way, but variations are naturally going to occur, and even if they cause me to raise an eyebrow of avuncular concern, that of course doesn’t by any means automatically mean they’re not going to work. I do think it’s easier from a self-/time-management perspective to say “all my time is now for language X”, but…if one is a better self-manager or time-manager, then a more complex, nuanced scheme should also be possible, I’m sure.

あけおめことよろ by the way 🙂

Oh one more thing — I have an article coming up in just under 12 hours about overcoming burn out, which is what I think this is really all about. In it, I’ll discuss how to overcome burnout without skipping a single moment in terms of being immersed in your target language (esp. Japanese). Again, I heartily recommend 100% commitment as opposed to taking time off; I think a 100% commitment is easy and fun and totally do-able, but I do respect the people who are for breaking give them the benefit of the doubt. Ultimately, this is a matter of personal responsibility — you want fluency, you do what you need to do, end of story.