30 day trial: Learn Hiragana, Katakana and Kanji.

[Elysha]

Hi Kura!

Thanks for your encouraging post in my thread

Wow!! I envy you for your staying power! I would be glad if I would stick to my plans every day!

You wrote that you get your motivation by thinking of the purpose, thinking of what you need it for. I hope I havent overread it: Why have you decided to learn it? Are you interested in other languages generally or did it have any specific reason?

Unfortunately I cannot give you any tip.. I havent even heard of Kanji, Hiragana etc. before
But learning this with flash cards is a good way!

I wish you good luck and a lot of motivation for keep on learning

Many greetings,
Elysha

[Kura Ookami]

Hi Elysha!

You're welcome.

Yay. I'm envied by someone. Lol!

I love watching anime and reading manga (Japanese animation and comic books). Do you think that's childish? I thought it would be cool to be able to watch anime and read manga in the original language.

Thanks. i might need a lot of luck to learn the kanji. 2000 characters. It really makes you appreiciate having only 52 characters in English.

[Kura Ookami]

Learn 20 characters: FAILED

Change of plans today. I've decided to review all the hiragana instead of learn any new characters. I'm pretty confident on all the hiragana except ね(ne) and れ(re) Come to think of it "r" and "n" look similar too.
I've got the feeling that I haven't got katakana down as well as the hiragana. I want to get to the point where I can get 90% or more correct in a test. Maybe I'll go back and relearn some of the katakana before moving on with the kanji. I'm certain I can learn the katakana perfectly. I'll admit I'm not so certain about the kanji.

[Kura Ookami]

Learn 20 characters: INCOMPLETE

I've learned 10 characters, not 20. I don't consider that a failure since I'm still learning characters. Maybe I should change the goal to learning 10 a day?

[Matt Willard]

Well, if you can handle 20 characters with some ease, I wouldn't. But if you're REALLY pushing, I'd tone it down.

[Kura Ookami]

Learn 20 characters: DONE

I've decided to keep it at twenty a day. Thanks for the advice Matt. My current method is simply to write the character several times while saying what it's reading or meaning is as I write the character each time. Then I can test myself on them using flashcards and I repeat the ones I got wrong. I'll test my knowledge of the katakana at the end of the week. I want to have hiragana and katakana down perfectly by the end of this trial. If possible I want to get about 200 kanji down too. That's about a 50% retention rate with the kanji. 100% or about 400 kanji would be great, but probably not achievable.

Then again, the impossible is just a little more difficult to achieve.than the difficult.

[Kura Ookami]

Learn 20 characters: DONE

I keep forgetting what day I'm on and how many days I've still got left. Anyway, I just checked. I started on the 20th of november and today's the third of december. That's 14 days total including the 20th and today. So the last day of the trial will be the 19th of december.
Katakana is interesting. It's got lots of similar looking characters like ン　ソ　シ　and ツ (n, so, shi, and tsu respectively).

[Kura Ookami]

20 additional characters: DONE

Today I found a program that helps in the review of kanji. Kanjigold. Kanji Gold HomePage: A Japanese kanji program. It goes through the kanji in grade order starting with the first grade kanji's, 80 in all. It's amazing how many resources there are for learning Japanese online.

[Kura Ookami]

Day 16:

Learn 20 characters: DONE

I'm thinking of getting the death note manga in its original language because I've heard it has furigana with all the kanji, which, at this stage, will be very useful.

At some point I'm thinking of trying to translate an ero-game from start to finish. One that has already been translated and that I've already got the translated version of so I've got something to check with.

Tomorrow I'm going to see my grandma so I'll post my progress on Sunday.

[Elysha]

Hi Kura

Sorry for answering so late... I havent been online here for a few days.
Great that you are still "on track" ! And that you did not stop after the days you didnt get everything completely done (as I always do)!

No, I dont think that this is childish at all! I find it great that you have started this challenge, because it seems to be quite difficult and you dont wanna do it because you have to but for fun! And if you like to read mangas...why not I had a friend who liked (and maybe still does) to read them as well. Arent they these books which you read "from behind"?

Good luck for the last part of your challenge and many greetings,
Elysha

[Matt Willard]

Originally Posted by Kura Ookami

[B]
At some point I'm thinking of trying to translate an ero-game from start to finish. One that has already been translated and that I've already got the translated version of so I've got something to check with.

You'll need to, uh, send it my way when you're done so I can, ah, check it. Yes. That's the perfect lie-I mean, that's the...perfect...yeah.

[Kura Ookami]

Days 17 and 18:

Saturday I chose to spend most of my time with my family. I went to a little party that was being held to wish my cousin and his wife a good trip to New Zealand where they're emigrating. I won't see them again for a while. I helped my aunt out in the kitchen and then played with my second cousins. It was a lot of fun.

Today however, I've got back on track. I did the twenty and watched some anime - Naruto, Death Note, Berserk and E's Otherwise. Is it wrong to kill the criminals of the world, to kill those who have harmed others, as Light does in Death Note?

[Matt Willard]

Originally Posted by Kura Ookami

Is it wrong to kill the criminals of the world, to kill those who have harmed others, as Light does in Death Note?

You know, I watched the Death Note dub for a while. It was pretty good. Then they moved it to 1:00 in the morning and I was all "screw that, I prefer sleeping"

[Scipio]

Not sure if anyone has given this to you yet, but this is the greatest resource to Japanese learning All Japanese All The Time Dot Com: How to learn Japanese. On your own, having fun and to fluency. » About

[Kura Ookami]

Day 19:

Learn 20 characters: DONE

Phew, kanji can be quite difficult to learn. Some of them are pretty complex with a lot of strokes.

Elysha, thanks for your encouragement. Yep they're books that you read from "behind" From right to left, which was weird to me to begin with, but now it's weird when I find a comic book the "normal" way round.

You prefer sleeping to watching anime Matt? Maybe you should buy the death note DVDs?

Scicio, that's a good resource. Thanks for the link.

[Matt Willard]

Originally Posted by Kura Ookami

You prefer sleeping to watching anime Matt? Maybe you should buy the death note DVDs?

At the time I was waking up at 8:00 AM, which was an improvement over my usual time, and I wanted to keep that streak going. As for buying the DVDs, I have a hard time committing to watching anything that's not on TV :V Well, I don't watch TV anymore, but you get what I mean.

[Eisho]

Originally Posted by Kura Ookami

20 more characters: DONE

Perhaps instead of looking at the kanji as a whole I could take it step by step, learn 10-20 kanji a day and take it one day at a time?
Why did the japanese keep the kanji and not just use hiragana and katakana? To make it harder to learn the language? Because the Japanese like kanji?

The kanji you are learning are already simplified forms of hte original Chinese symbols. Hiragana was indeed created to make things simpler (and to an extent is has achieved this) and Katakana evolved to be used for foreign words so everyone was clear about their origin.

MacArthur during the SCAP occupation wanted to scrap kanji...if only...

Seriously, even Japanese struggle. What makes it worse is that after spending their childhood learning to write the kanji they get a job using a PC and forget how to write the intricate symbols (though can still read them).

Good luck. You are doing very well.

Cheers,

Eisho

[MzKeke]

I'm interested in joining this challenge.. though does it count that I'm taking japanese classes? So far I've learned speaking distantly, using verbals, nominals, adjectivals, and simple speaking structures. I've also learned 42 symbols of the katakana alphabet (out of 50) Next semester we'll probably start learning hiragana and kanji, but I want to get a head start.

[Kura Ookami]

Days 20 and 21:

Learn 20 characters per day 40 in all: DONE
I've tried to firgure out what time in the day is best for learning the characters. I'm fairly certain that the best time is when i first get up. If I make it the first thing I do, I'm likely to accomplish the goal. If I leave it till the afternoon or evening I might forget about it and end up not doing it or doing it when I'm tired, which reduces the effectiveness of the learning.

[Kura Ookami]

mzkeke: You can join the challenge if you like. We could help each other if you like? For example, I've been thinking of instead of focusing on kanji trying to find a way to use the radicals in the kanji to make the learning easier. For example, 口　which means mouth is a radical and can be found in several kanji. If we can find a rule that works for all the kanji that the radical appears in maybe we can expedite the process of learning.

[Kura Ookami]

Day 22 and 23:

Learn 20 characters: DONE

I've also found a translation program. Atlas V14. You can get a trial version of it here: Trial Version : FUJITSU

I haven't tried it yet, but it could help me with my goal of learning japanese.

[Kura Ookami]

According to my calender it's the 19th of decemeber today and I haven't learned any kanji for a few days. I've had a bad cold and just haven't felt like doing anything. Would i have succeeded if i hadn't had the cold? I had a good momentum going and the finish line was in sight so I think I might have suceeded. Of course, it's not possible to be 100% certain.

Conclusions: I want to try other methods of learning, but this method has served me well. I've learned all the hiragana. I'm less certain about the katakana and I have learned some kanji. It helps when I see the kanji I've learned in animes or mangas.
I'm thinking of learning kanji through sentences instead of taking the kanji on it's own to give context. Maybe by doing that I can learn grammar at the same time without explicitly trying to learn grammar.

[EnduranceNinja]

I gotta say Kura you got me motivated to try to relearn what Japanese I did learn in college. That will be my New years goal. It's good to see you are progressing at it.