I had a question come up when I was reading this post. How did you manage to make your Japanese friends to just sit around to listen to? If it was in Japan, then I suppose that is different. But, I am worried about how to make new Japanese friends if I am not good enough yet to speak to anyone? I imagine after making friends, just sitting and listening is easy enough. But, is there some kind of phrase I can use to ask them if I can be their friend or something? Thanks for the help.

And awesome job on the posts as always!

I am finishing up my master’s degree. I have some free time and am taking Japanese 101 at the University. In the Spring i’ll take the second course. Not taking the class and doing only your method is not an option. I like the class, the people, and its a fun time. Anyway…

So, on the side I’ve started to learn the Kanji with Heisig method. I’ve also began the development of an immersion environment, as much as possible. The difference is that, we’ve already learned Hiragana and are reading/writing sentences with additional grammar points. We’ll also learn Katakana in a few weeks. Obviously this is not your recommended ordering.

So, the question is how can I optimize my situation? It is unrealistic with my time-constraints that I’ll be able to finish RTK1 by Spring (probably 1000 Kanji). On the other hand I feel like I should be learning sentences, though I only have Kana to work with.

Should I just learn at the same pace as the class is designed, and then focus on finishing RTK? Or do you have any insights?

PS LOVE THE SITE!!!!!!!!!! Its exactly what Ive been looking for. URESHII!!

If, however, I continue my present attitude that I’m going to get it, then even with these steps they shouldn’t be a problem. I have all these lists, but little methodology. I guess this is where classes help best. I wonder about Japanese children: I know they actually learn kanji more from reading them, but they have the advantage of hearing the readings and instantly knowing the meaning, while I with my still lacking vocabulary have to go with one or the other or both with extra effort. Now, I don’t want to learn kanji with English meanings in mind, so some methods I will exclude.

When I run them in the khatzumemo, I come across it and then write it on a piece of paper and guess the readings. I judge myself based on how confident I am in writing it without seeing it first and based on how many readings I can remember.

Right. On khatzumemo you can upload those XML files. Because you programmed this into khatzumemo, this implies that you understand the format of the XML files or at least know where to go for a description of it. Could you do that for me? It’s more annoying to have to go through the source code of Mnemosyne to try to figure it out. :p

As for mistakes, yah, that’s about what I was meaning too. I think that effort of society helps to prevent the language from evolving faster than it does. Chomskey, et al., like to put that a child more or less speaks perfectly by age 5, that assumption doesn’t really hold. Also, a Kanji reading error like you described (the reading of the second Kanji is a valid reading of it, just not for this) seems like it could be a native error anyway.

I agree that if you’re ploughing on with a horrible accent and inventing more prolificly (OMG sp? See? total native error.) than Thomas Edison completely novel grammatical forms, all in an effort to “just communicate” your thoughts, then you’re going backwards, putting the cart before the horse.

Anyway, like I’ve said before, I just followed AntiMoon’s advice on this. And had the confidence that my brain would start putting out correct sentences after sufficient input. Just like you can recite movie dialogue and TV commercials without output practice, after sufficient viewings.

www.zompist.com/whylang.html

which suggests that young peers’ cruelty may be a big factor in how a person can develop a knowledge of the narrow range of correctness in a language:

“Their [children’s] peers are nastier [than adults’]. Embarrassment is a prime motivating factor for human beings (I owe this insight to Marvin Minsky’s The Society of Mind, but it was most memorably expressed by David Berlinski (in Black Mischief, p. 129), who noted that of all emotions, from rage to depression to first love, only embarrassment can recur, decades later, with its full original intensity). Dealing with a French waiter is nothing compared with the vicious reception in store for a child who speaks funny.”

This I find interesting. It does seem that children make mistakes at first when learning their native language, but they always end up correcting themselves, despite this history of bad output. I don’t mean to equivocate this with an adult who just ploughs on with a bad accent and broken grammar (try John Mayer) without a care in the world and just wanting to express themselves (I saw this kind of person in Japan back in late June, early July), but it seems that if you have already had sufficient input when you start speaking, even if you make a few mistakes here and there, as long as your pronunciation is good (read perfect) and you have a good idea of the grammar, it wouldn’t be as bad. A kid who is starting out seems to have near perfect pronunciation (perhaps still messing up things like ‘th’ and ‘r’), but just OK grammar. It’s just the kid somehow ends up correcting himself.

“Funny story–I had one friend, who’s Japanese born and raised, but is actually of Korean ancestry. Due to a kind of national pride thing, she initially wouldn’t speak Japanese to me, even though it was her first and best language (her Korean is super rusty, she never uses it). So the silent deal was that she spoke in English and I spoke in Japanese. She is one of my good friends, but has the BIGGEST mean streak, so she would correct me mercilessly. If I paused mumbled she’d go “hurry UP!!”. If I said something wrong or odd, she’d go: “I don’t understand what you’re saying!! Your Japanese SUCKS, dude!!”. So I had to speak natural-sounding, naturally-worded Japanese to her for her to even accept it; it sucked because she’d freely (and loudly) put me down in public, too, so I had to really raise my game. Anyway, as I got better, she eventually spoke Japanese to me about 80-90% of the time. I don’t know why I’m sharing this…”

Hmm? Was this in Japan?

Funny story–I had one friend, who’s Japanese born and raised, but is actually of Korean ancestry. Due to a kind of national pride thing, she initially wouldn’t speak Japanese to me, even though it was her first and best language (her Korean is super rusty, she never uses it). So the silent deal was that she spoke in English and I spoke in Japanese. She is one of my good friends, but has the BIGGEST mean streak, so she would correct me mercilessly. If I paused or mumbled she’d go “hurry UP!!”. If I said something wrong or odd, she’d go: “I don’t understand what you’re saying!! Your Japanese SUCKS, dude!!”. So I had to speak natural-sounding, naturally-worded Japanese to her for her to even accept it; it sucked because she’d freely (and loudly) put me down in public, too, so I had to really raise my game. Anyway, as I got better, she eventually spoke Japanese to me about 80-90% of the time. She speaks super-fast, by the way, at least it used to seem so; she never slowed down, dumbed down or de-slanged her Japanese for me. I don’t know why I’m sharing this…

Hmmm…What was my point…Oh–For one thing, your Japanese friends probably aren’t being as harsh on you as they could be, because (to use a stereotype), they don’t have that harsh, Korean frankness (anyone who has friends from Korea probably knows what I mean…or not…I don’t know). Few people have the energy to correct every mistake you make, or the uevos to make you look bad; this is a problem. The other problem is they could just get USED to your brokenness and learn to parse it. So, yeah, listen. Input. Input. Input. Have your friends speak to you, have them take you around places (tag along with them on errands if you can; it would be a great learning opportunity), watch what they say and do. Treat them like parents whom you’re observing and imitating.

When you’re ready to speak, it will come out. Until then, just listen. Work on your comprehension. Until you can fully understand other people, you have no business speaking.