Patience is not passive waiting. Patience is not static. Patience isn’t sitting down and shutting up — that’s being cooperative and docile to help driving parents. Patience is dynamic. Patience is active preparation. Patience is doing.
If you’re not too preoccupied and too physically tired by active preparation to be worried, then you’re not being patient. You’re just being a whiny, sulky brat. And that’s fine, too. But don’t call it patience.
The patient language learner is watching some Japanese TV right now. She’s whipping out her iPhone and doing Surusu reps every time she gets five minutes here or there. She loves to whip things out 😛 .
Patience is silently busying yourself with doing things that help. Impatience is talking very loudly about how nothing works, while doing things that hurt.
haha , are we talkin about trans- sexual’s here?
“She’s whipping out her iPhone and doing Surusu reps every time ((he)) gets five minutes here or there. She loves to whip things out”
pulled the switch-aroo on us there. 😛
OMG lol.
Dude, your awesome!
I remember reading your blog a few years back, and thought it was some crazy idea .
And now, I’m almost there… almost fluent…
I can listen and watch Japanese drama and understand about 80% of whats being said. Now I’m just learning and remembering kanji.
It’s a great feeling, because I was listening to Tohoshinki song that was in One Piece, and actually understood part of the chorus, which said “If it rains, I’ll be your umbrella, If its a strong wind, I’ll be your wall”… and I was like dam son thats so poetic….
Mind you I’ve been listening to this song for more than a hundred times….
Now I just gotta get literate, btw, Khatz, you know where I can buy japanese galge ? Clannad or Air? Jlist has it but I think their’s is all translated….
Neither Clannad nor Air have been translated, so you’re getting the raw Japanese product from J-List. You used to be able to go to Himeya Shop for ’em, but that’s dead now, so alas. Search out Paletweb, Getchu and DLsite if you want to go a deeper. Amazon won’t help you ever because they can’t ship software overseas =(
For console galge, it’s all about PSN. Grab a PSP/PS3 and a Japanese PSN account and buy all the datas you want. Similarly, for hard copies, PlayAsia has you covered.
Hope that helps.
How about: Patience is not letting Japanese audio justify English text..?
It’s a bit of an issue I’ve been having… Whenever I notice I’m reading English that I don’t need to be reading, I’ll stop, but in the process make a vacuum.. I need to find a good resource of simple Japanese to read… -_-‘
Today I changed my iPhone Operating System language to Japanese after encountering that suggestion about a dozen times on this blog. You beat me down with patience and persistence! Thanks!
Really it’s not so bad. I recognize the icons, which helps, and I’ve been learning the ONYOMI using the “movie method” (associate all similar sounding onyomi to scenes from a particular film), so it’s not a huge step for an intermediate learner wading through the kanji-rich environs of the iphone OS.
Oh, and Khatz, thanks for your post on “getting used to Japanese” vs. “Learning Japanese”. That was very helpful for me in seeing immersion as attainable and non-threatening.
Finally, my wife, who has zero interest in Japanese, still loves some of the learning concepts I’ve passed onto her from your blog. Keep it up. (we don’t have time to read all those books you read!)
Sup Khatz. I just came across your blog a couple weeks ago. For years, I thought
I was crazy. Working two jobs, 7 days a week, and still found time to become
near-native fluent in Spanish in under 2 years (reading, writing, speaking.)
To all doubters, this man’s “technique” (if you wanna call it that) works. As
native English speakers, we’re conditioned to think of language as something to
attack: “I wanna DOMINATE (target language.)” “I wanna MASTER (target language.)”
Learning a language is not a war, it is an experience. Fall in love with the
culture, and the language will be seeping from your pores.
Thank you Khatz. You’ve proven I’m not crazy for wrapping myself in Spanish to the
point of being called “Blaxican” by everyone I knew.
Peace.
So it’s active patience.