japanese blog#3 yep, my head is a mess

I know, it's the third post in a month. I'm addicted to telling my experience here. Anyway, I think I'm making a big fuss out of nothing, but I'm now confused with the whole "learning kanji" approach that I decided to undertake just a few weeks ago. I've been reading some websites on the internet , looking for methods to learn kanji in an effective way and recently I just discovered those little things called "radicals", which to my understanding, are like the building blocks of kanji. To some people, whom this discovery happened until much later down the row, I may seem like a lucky guy, and maybe I am, but now I'm so confused with the whole concept. 

Let me explain: first of all, I am confused with the whole Kanji thing, I mean, do they represent entire words or just syllables? When I google this, all the websites that I've visited tell me that they can be both. However,  I thought, very naively I must say, that if they represented syllables then one kanji had to correspond to one and only one syllable. But yesterday I learnt that this is not the case. There's a lot of homophones as far as Kanji are concerned so the entire "one kanji at a time" approach doesn't make much sense now. 

Recently I came to the realization that the Japanese government releases a list of 2230 kanji (or that was the latest update) which are to be taught to the Japanese children during their school years and these kanji happen to match the most common kanji used in the media and the newspapers. So, to become functionally literate in Japanese (oh, big words over here) you have to learn these 2230 Kanji or so. Furthermore, I also discovered that they are taught in a sequential way from the simplest kanji (as far as stroke number is concerned) to the most difficult ones which may have 21 strokes or more. So here's when it gets tricky: the most difficult ones are the ones that represent easy concepts such as 紫 purple 猿 monkey and 顔 face.

It's all explained wonderfully in this website called kanjidamage.com So, now I'm tempted to learn the 200 radicals first before even trying to memorize word by word by word. Well, enough of whinnying, I should share the good news with you guys: I read a word in hiraga. It's a big deal form me because that means that I'm actually learning. I decided to take the "the one word at time" approach, no learning of hiragana or katagana separately and It's paying off people. It was the word ろおまじ which is like the transcription of the Japanese language using the Latin alphabet. Yes, I totally do my homework when it comes to languages.

I also should say that the one word I would use to describe the language learning process is UNCONFORTABLE. I mean, seriously: it's unconfortable at the beginning when you understand nearly nothing, it's unconfortable in the middle stages of proficiency, when you understand but not that much. And it's uncofortable when you start hearing the grammar constrains and they sound weird to you as well as the new phonemes of the language (if you're lucky enough) BUT I do have to say that I know for a fact that this is only temporary If I'm consistent enough. Gosh, when did I become so whinny? ありがとう.

Japanese blog#2: Little things

Since my last post I managed to keep watching anime in Japanese (with either English or Spanish sub) and trying not to read the subtitles and now it feels kind of weird to watch anime in other languages, which seems to be a little odd. Anyways, I have had a busy schedule, but now that I quit my job and basically have no job propositions whatsoever, I think I'm gonna have more time to watch Japanese anime. 

I'm watching Sailor moon, Hell girl, and a yaoi anime named Junjou Romantica, to whom it might concerned. Anyhow, lately, I came to realize that that little vowel "う" represents double vowels; which may sound pretty lame to someone who already knows the language, but it's a very important discovery for me, since before this "breakthrough" I used to pronounce the word " よう" (you) as yoh.oo. singing along some anime karaokes. Now I laugh just thinking about it. And so, words containing that "diphthong" such as ありがとう ("arigatou" as transcribed in some anime karaokes) or さようならwere very confusing to me because the pronunciation was different from the spelling. 

Also, I've come to the realization that hiragana writing can be done in various styles (again, pretty lame discovery to people who already know the language well) and it's not that strict or rigid, which means that I have to use my memory even more. As far as learning kanji is concerned, I've decided to take one word at a time, for that's how we normally learn things in languages: I've settled to learn those freaking symbols kanji only in the context of a word, that is to say, no memorization of individual kanji, which wouldn't make much sense to me since I don't know the language well.

In addition to this, I've come to appreciate that in order to learn a language, one needs a lot of motivation. It didn't seem obvious to me in English because the whole process happened in stages, so to speak. So, I remained "fooled" in the early stages because I thought I was approaching native-like command. However, It wasn't until I was in the midst of it, that I learned that I still have a long way to go. It's like I thought I was very close to my goal, only to discover later that there was still a lot of details to polish. 

On the other hand, it's not the same with Japanese. I know that If I want to be good, I'll have to spend years exposing myself intensively to the language and learning how to write it. Anyway, it's not that I want to come off as a whinny baby but, I feel like I'm at the base of a mountain and that I still have a long way up. 

Also, I couldn't find any reasonable way of installing a "Japanese spelling software" on my computer so I chose to download a program which allows me to type in Japanese and then I copy and paste it wherever I need it, which was basically what I had to do to write this post. I'm open to suggestions. 

PS: to anyone who reads this, please, if you have any recommendations about which anime I should watch, don't be afraid of leaving a comment, in the comment section below. さようなら。 

Japanese blog #1: Greetings and a little bit of history.

So, I took the idea of writing a blog about my language learning process with Japanese from a website. And I think the first thing that I have to say is that this is not the first time I try to learn a foreign language. Actually, my first language is Spanish and my second language is English so if you come across a grammar mistake somewhere in these pages, you now know why.

In fact, I have to admit that I feel pretty comfortable with English, so comfortable, that I actually have the guts to write a Japanese blog in English. I chose English because it's pretty much the most common second language in the world and this is actually an opportunity to practice my writing skills. So here it is: I've learned a language and I managed to remain conscious the whole process. It wasn't the same case with Spanish with which I don't have any recollection of learning it. Just a few words here and there, such as "cuadra" (block) and the expression "tienes razón" which is Spanish for "you're right".

But with English, it is a struggle and I have to admit that I'm not done yet: I make grammatical mistakes from time to time, I don't have a perfect pronunciation and my vocabulary is not as vast as in Spanish which, after all, it's my mother tongue. However, I do have to say that my comprehension is near to 90% and If I'm not "there" yet (and by "there" I mean, native-like pronunciation, grammar and oral comprehension) I feel closer now than never before. It has taken me 8 years or so to reach this level in English.

Anyway, the real star of this story is Japanese so, to sum it up, I have to say that now, with the experience I've gotten trying to cram English words and grammar formulas into my head, I've realized that the best learning method you can use is raw, extensive and intensive exposure. I know some of you may say that you also need grammar lessons and all that and I agree, because they teach you the grammar rules (or tendencies) explicitly but don't neglect the context which in this case is the raw and pure exposure part.

I've come to wonder why is it that it took me so long to learn the grammar constrains of English and why was the process of acquiring vocabulary so unreasonably slow. The only answer I can come up with is that I rarely exposed myself to English. I mean, I meant to do that several times but by the minute I started watching my favorite TV show and not understanding anything of it and getting bored and hopeless, I started to read the subtitles.

It was too hard and now I regret it so much. Anyhow, now I tried to apply my new knowledge to Japanese. I've heard some words here and there and still don't know what they mean. But I keep listening to Japanese no matter how much I want to read the subtitles and  figure out who's who in Full-metal Alchemist. So far, I've learned the word Arigatō ありがとう, Nīsan兄さん (very common word in Fullmetal Alchemist since Alfonse is always calling his brother "Nīsan" and I happened to have watched most of the episodes in Spanish 4 years ago). Other words are: Gomen'nasai ごめんなさい, Kon'nichiwa こんにちは and that's all. Although, I keep hearing the expresion "shimashita" all the time and I still don't know what it means. I wish you guys could tell me any method you use to learn Kanji or if you just used plain memorization.