Silly me, I decided to take my gym bag home from work over the weekend so that I could wash my clothes. I managed to leave my mp3 player out in a place where my 1 year old was able to get his hands on it, and before I knew it he was banging it around the inside of a pot. It only plays out of one ear now. So I guess I’m going to use my phone from now on when at the gym.

Pimsleur Lesson 7:

I’ve been kind of cheating with these. As you know, I listen to them at the gym, and I think I’m picking it up alright. But I’ve been reviewing by looking at Susan’s notes over here.

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Home Vocabulary:

いえ – house
(アパート) – Apartment (This one isn’t actually in the chapter, because apparently everyone lives in a house).
へや – room. Is described as meaning a general room, but also a bedroom.
いま – living room
だいどころ – kitchen
れいぞうこ – refrigerator
おてあらい – bathroom (polite) literally is “hand washing place”
トイレ – toilet (it seems that this is the same as Australia… where the bathroom is simply called a toilet). Toilet rooms don’t tend to have bathtubs.
ながしだい – sink (this has me mildly confused as Influent suggests that the word for sink is simply “ながし”. Google is recommending the katakana “シンク”
おふろ – bath. Interestingly, I can’t seem to di
おふろば – bath-room. Interestingly, I can’t find this anywhere online other than google translate, which describes it as bathing facilities. I believe that the kanji is used more frequently for this word, which appears to be: お風呂 rather than おふろ. ば means “place” which means that this is literally “bath-room”, where you would bathe.
やね – roof
てんじょう – ceiling (already learned in Influent)
かべ – wall (already learned in Influent)
ゆか – hardwood floor (interesting nuance that wasn’t clear from Influent)

I think the learnjapanese sub-reddit is going to be one of my favourite places on the internet! Not even 20 minutes after asking about sink, I’ve already got a few answers to help clear up the confusion.

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I gotta start by saying… from an app design stand-point. I think that Human Japanese is mostly great. The one gripe I have, is it doesn’t properly motivate me to take the tests multiple times. At first it did! You take a test, see you have to do it multiple times to get all the points… whee you click and get the points! But as the chapters go on, you end up with a larger pool of questions than each test allows. Which means you can’t max everything out in just 4 attempts anymore… which means…I’m kind of done taking it multiple times. No more dopamine hits from the tests.

I keep hearing stories about how Japanese both is and isn’t vague. The language is quite able to be expressive, but it seems that a lot of information tends to be left out intentionally. Human Japanese Chapter 7, begins by describing how “any part of a sentence can be omitted if it is understood from context. Any part, that is, except the verb. Every well-formed Japanese sentence has a verb, no exceptions. And the verb always goes last”

(That) makes sense (to me).

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I listened to Pimsleur 1-5 again at the gym today, which means that my ability to state that I am eating something is a little better now – not to mention my ability to ask if you want to drink something. Overall I’m feeling more confident with what I’ve learned so far, and am ready to start with lesson 6 tomorrow. I’m pleased with my gym/diet/study habits that I’ve managed to form this month!

In other news, the past couple of days have been busy for me with preparing and grading course work for Van Arts. I think that at some point I might have to create some FAQ style tutorials for Houdini or something so that I can help address stuff to the broader Houdini community. I’ve got some ideas for stuff I’d like to make for video tutorials, but right now I guess learning some language is a really really nice break for me mentally. All CG all the time is no good for between my ears. Read More >

So, a week after buying it, I found myself with a spare moment and decided to give Influent a shot. I’m not 100% sure how in-depth the software goes, as I’ve only put an hour and a half into it so far, but it seems like a pretty good flash card system for memorizing nouns. Apparently adjectives and verbs are also part of the vocabulary. Honestly, even after just the session today it seems like 400 is an extremely small number of words…. but considering I got it for free (by selling Steam trading cards for credit on my account), I’ve already got my money’s worth.

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Ever wonder why the Japanese kana alphabets are Katakana, and Hira”ga”na? I actually did. I wasn’t curious enough to look it up on my own, but the question had occurred to me. Luckily, someone on /r/LearnJapanese thought to ask, and someone provided an answer.

According to Wikipedia, Rendaku is a phenomenon in Japanese morphophonology that governs the voicing of the initial consonant of the non-initial portion of a compound or prefixed word. In modern Japanese, rendaku is common but at times unpredictable, with certain words unaffected by it.

Rendaku can be seen in the following words:

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Hmm…. I just spent an hour trying to troubleshoot a BSOD on my computer. It seems that somehow my default settings for my video card got set and running Photoshop with my integrated card was causing chaos… but setting the default to use my NVIDIA card … seems? to have fixed it? Maybe? I hope?

So I did more Japanese today, here is what I learned!

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Wasn’t able to make an update last night, and I likely won’t on Tuesdays or Thursdays as I teach on those nights. Right now I’m trying to cut my sugar in-take (because I spent $36 on candy last week including White Cheddar Popcorn, Twix, Pocky, and a few bags of junk from the local candy store), and making friends with a treadmill at lunch. So my caloric Feng Shui is totally wrong. By the time I’m home at night it’s kind of hard to force myself to stay up late doing anything that requires concentration.

But that doesn’t mean I’m not still trying to learn. When I’m on the treadmill, I’m listening to Pimsleur. Now that I’m three lessons in, I’m both finding it tricky and enjoyable. It really helps to have something to keep my mind going when I feel like I’m a hamster. The way they continuously revisit what you’ve already learned while forcing you to pick up new phrases seems helpful. The mind is constantly trying to recall stuff that it’s not very familiar with, but there’s always something you recognize to help you get a little Dopamine hit.

Since there’s a couple of sounds that I wasn’t 100% sure if I was hearing correctly over the sounds of people working out and Queen on the gym speakers… here are the various phrases that have been introduced so far:

Lesson 1

– すみませんあなたはえいごがわかりますか。 Excuse me, do you understand English?
– いいえわたしはいえごがわかりません。 No, I don’t understand English.
– わたしはにほんごがすこしわかります。　I understand a little Japanese.
– あなたはあアメリカじんですか。　Are you American?
– はいわたしはアメリカじんです。　Yes, I am American.

((It seems that typing in Katakana isn’t so hard… when you type a word such as amerika, you actually get a drop down list that lets you convert to Katakana from Hiragana. Yay!))

Things to take note of from the lesson:

Verbs:
– わかります / わかりません – wakarimasu / wakarimasen – “understand” / “don’t understand”
– すみません – sumimasen – “Excuse me/Pardon”. As you can tell by the “sen” at the end of the verb, this is the negative form of a verb. After looking it up, it looks like This is a negative form of the verb “sumimasu” which means “it ends.” So, “sumimasen” literally means “it does not end,” and by extension “I’m indebted.” “Sumimasen deshita” is the past, or perfective, form of
“sumimasen.” It literally translates as “it did not end” or “I was indebted,” which actually means “I’m sorry for what happened.”
– です – desu (u is silent) – “is” / “am”

Nouns:
– わたし / あなた – watashi / anata – “I” / “You”
– えいご / にほんご – eigo / nihongo – “English” / “Japanese”

Particles:
– は / が / か – ha (actually pronounced wa) / ga / ka – wa is the topic marker… I am the topic, but ga is the subject marker. ka is a spoken question mark. We’re asking about your English comprehension. You wa English ga understand ka. Anata wa eigo ga wakarimasu ka.

Affirmation:
– いいえ / はい – iie / hai – “no” / “yes”

Adjective:
– アメリカじん – amerikajin – “American”. Amerika uses Katakana since it is a foreign word.

Adverb:
– すこし – sukoshi – “a bit”/”few”/”a little” Sukoshi was a bit tricky to hear in the recordings as it seems to be pronounced more like “sko” than “su-ko”.

Lesson 2

New stuff:
– ありがとうございます – arigatou gozaimasu – Thank you (ございます is added for politeness)
– おはようございます- ohayou gozaimasu – “good morning”
– じゃまた －ja mata – “see you” “good bye”
– じょうず – jouzu – skilled (じょうずです) I am skilled.
– じゃありません – ja arimasen – “am not” じゃ is a contraction of では, like can’t is a contraction of cannot. Both are acceptable. In spoken Japanese, it’s probably more natural to say じゃ, because it rolls off the tongue easier. では would be used more in written contexts. But basically, they’re interchangeable. You can actually say dewa mata above for good bye as well, but it sounds more rigid. ja is more informal.　More on that here.
– いい – ii – “good”/”nice”
– おてんき – otenki – “weather”
– ね – ne – “eh?” as in “It’s nice weather, eh?” or いいおてんきですね。

Lesson 3

New stuff:

– でも – you can use でも (demo) at the beginning of a sentence to mean “but,”
– まだ – still or yet. So if we combine it with the previously learned じょうず, we can get でもまだじょうずじゃありません。 -> demo mada jouzu ja arimasen -> But, I am not skilled yet.
– よく – nicely; properly; well; skillfully; skilfully
– いやな – unpleasant feeling
– ども – Domo is an adverb which means “very” . Its function is to make you sound serious, and it can be used with either Arigato gozaimasu (Thank you) or Sumimasen (I’m sorry.). If you just say domo by itself, it’s interpreted as thank you, but not as sorry.
– こんにちは – “greetings!” “hello” “good day”
– にほん – The Japanese names for Japan are Nippon (にっぽん) and Nihon (にほん). They are both written in Japanese using the Kanji 日本.

I write this with a bit of a headache at the moment. I’m a sugar addict. I eat at least 1000 calories a day of various candy. And I’ve decided to cut back. Today was day one of not buying any junk food. I’ve had to leave my debit card with my wife so that I can’t just cave to my cravings and fetch something from 7/11 during my work day. On top of that I’ve brought my weight vest to work, and am attempting to get back into the habit of using the gym at lunch.

Which brings me to Pimsleur. I decided that if I’m to force myself onto a tread mill, and thoughtlessly burn calories… perhaps it would be better to make the exercise slightly less thoughtless. Each lesson in Pimsleur is 30 minutes long, and that’s about the amount of time I get to work out at lunch, so I figured it makes sense to combine my efforts. I listened to the first lesson today, and it’s straight forward enough. I get hung up on little things. It seems preposterous that anyone would would ever have a conversation in which they don’t think the person they are speaking to understands them, so they ask if they speak English (in Japanese). Read More >

Interestingly, just after posting my blog post Friday night, one of my friends on Facebook had posted this link. It’s a neat story about a train station in Japan that stays open for just one patron. It’s neat when you post something and then immediately see tangentially related news.

A couple of other links I forgot to add previously:
– influent, a game on Steam that I’d like to pick up along with Koe , whenever it releases. These promise teaching Japanese, and so they have my interest.
– I’ve also got memrise, for vocab… but I can only use so many tools at once. I might actually forget about playing Fable in Japanese for now and just focus on Human Japanese.
– Wanikani seems to be another recommended resource. But see above.

It’s been interesting trying to find a dictionary to use. There seems to be a lot of people arguing on reddit over which is the best (apparently all Android solutions are lacking), but it seems that Japanese is well regarded, as is Google Translate itself. jisho seems good enough for now as a web-based dictionary. If you’ve got an iOS device of some sort, it seems that the go-to app is “IMIWA?”.

I don’t know what I was thinking when I said on Friday, “An hour a day seems doable”. That’s nonsense. I’m so bloody strapped for time right now. I wasn’t able to find more than 15 minutes yesterday, and that’s only because I looked at the memrise app while I was on the toilet. At least I was able to put some time in today. On that note: I decided to try launching Fable in Japanese and was immediately greeted by:

I wasn’t really planning on reading the Terms of Service anyways… but… uh… we’re not off to a good start. It struck me that since my computer’s language settings are English, maybe I need to enable Japanese in Windows. http://windows.microsoft.com/en-ca/windows/language-packs#lptabs=win81 made it seem as though the process would be simple enough, so I added the language and tried it again.

Whatever. I hit the button that had an A on it. Clearly that means “A-OK!”. The game launched in, and it looks like in-game the text is Japanese. So hopefully this is doable.

Google Translate is pretty ace in that it lets you take pictures of text and translate it. As you can see in the below image, I was able to take a picture of the Spacehamster Japanese app’s logo and translate it. It means “Japanese” and you can even hear and see the Japanese pronunciation. But it’s not as good at picking up longer sentences in smaller font. The opening screen of Fable was kind of garbled at first. By manually correcting the capture using the drawing tools, I was able to get it to translate correctly.

While this seems super powerful, and like it’ll be very handy if I find myself needing to translate signs or something… I don’t know if it’s the right approach for learning to read. I think I might need to learn how to properly look up Kanji in a dictionary based on radicals? I don’t know… it seems too easy this way… I can imagine that I’ll have a lower retention rate if I’m not forced to look up individual words… but at least I could fall back on this if looking up words leads to incoherent translations.

For now at least, I guess I’ll focus on Human Japanese.

I’ve kind-of-sort-of got typing figured out… わかります。 Now that I’ve got it sorted out (You can hit the Windows button plus space to switch keyboard languages, and once in Japanese mode, you can hit alt ~ to toggle on kana input. It’s actually the first time I’ve ever legitimately typed kana on a computer. In the past, I’ve copied and pasted the kana tediously from the interwebs.

Which means, I can track phrases that I learn!

Such as the first one in Human Japanese: ここを… alright, so I’m not as well off as I thought… I can type the Hiragana… but no idea how to switch it to Katakana… nor is my Katakana good enough to recognize the symbol I’m looking at at the moment:

Luckily the internet is full of wisdom, and I should be able to figure it out with it’s help.

At any rate, I like the writing in the app so far, and the formatting of it as well. It seems like it does a great job of breaking down sentences…. when you press on the kana, you can hear a pronunciation, and then you can see the translation, and the ingredients.

Some language rules that are covered in Chapter 1 include:
1. Give each vowel its own, distinct pronunciation. ああ for example.
2. The only exceptions are that え is extended with い, and お with う.
3. Japanese does not use stress modulation as in the word “com-pu-ter”.

I’ve always had difficulty remembering #2, which is why I write it down now. The rest of the chapter seems to mostly cover consonant pronunciation – something I believe I have down.

I’ve just finished chapter 1. I’m finding the Microsoft IME typing to be rather odd to get used to (particularly trying to fill in flash cards using Anki). It doesn’t seem to be designed for Japanese font input and constantly toggles back to the line that I’m not trying to type into. I’m also going to have to actually make an Anki account so I can sync cards between my computer and phone.