Remembering the Katakana

I'm back to 97% accuracy for all hiragana, so I tried my hand at katakana again. It will probably take twice as long as the hiragana (which granted, only took a day and a half), but I'd forgotten how much harder it was. I'll have to drill like mad to make it work long term, because it's not enough to recognize the characters eventually, I want to be able to sound words out with close to the same ease I can use English phonics, and be able to from 'a' to あ as well. That will take a lot longer than just the recognition, so I'll chip away at it ("fifty times in your notebook!") instead. 

Still, I've got 25 of the 46 basic characters down to 100% accuracy, so I'm hopeful I can finish the other 21 today, tomorrow finish the voiced characters plus the doubled characters, and by Friday have the weird doubled characters down (mostly for English sounds that don't exist in Japanese; but since I read a lot of manga/light novels, foreign words are everywhere, and will be unintelligible without that effort. Ugh).

Going forward I will probably segment my kana review into three sets or so: basic characters, voiced characters, and doubled characters. I'll likely do two reps: one set in order and one set at random. I may further subdivide into hiragana and katakana, at least in the beginning. After awhile I'll just do one review daily of the 244 characters all at once, with all scripts, in random order. When I can do that in less than five minutes with 99%+ accuracy, I will be confident that the kana are truly mine. 

Kana Redux

 ....aaaand promptly after learning the kana, I did no work on Japanese. At all. For eight months. Which meant my vocabulary is shot, my kanji is shot, and my kana is shot. I didn't learn much/any grammar, so that's not shot. 

So now I get to learn kana again. Don't think it will take as long this time, since I've already retrieved the 46 basic, and will do the voiced characters this evening, plus the compound characters. Tomorrow or Wednesday I should have the basic katakana down, and by Friday I should have the kana again. 

My goals haven't changed (read/watch raws, get conversationally fluent someday). I might be erratic and lazy, but I'm not giving up. The language is too much fun, after all. And it's mine, in a way that no other language is. This is something I chose for myself. So let's see it through to the end.

But for now, let's climb the kana mountain again and get our first key back.

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It's just before 2000, and I just regained 94% accuracy on the hiragana, all characters, including voiced and compound characters, in random order. Tomorrow I can probably achieve the same even on the harder scripts, but the main task will be getting same or better scores with the katakana, which is way more common than I thought back in August. 

Still, not bad for one day's effort. I'm almost halfway to the first key again. 

Conquered Kana, Grammar Flirting, and Planning Ahead

Got 'em. The kana are mine! Okay, the final list of extended katakana are still not flawless (batting about .666 average compared to .950 for the rest) but who cares? I'll be reviewing the whole kana once or twice daily for the next forseeable chunk of time - at least a month and probably three - so we're fine. First key: obtained. Not bad for 11 days of work. I've put maybe 15, 20 hours in so far (did a loonnngg stretch today, pausing only to read some more resources on learning methods and go to confession), and I'll shoot for 10-14 hours per week. 

Conquering the kana means I can now crack the grammar textbook, and I absolutely love Tae Kim's grammar so far - the presentation is clear, logical, and up front on the difficulties. I've only just got my feet wet, declaring that something is so/not so in the not-past and the past. I've learned that most of what declensions and conjugations give me in, say, Latin or Greek is accomplished by particles, e.g. は、を、or だ. Now I understand why all those tiny words are in manga/anime titles! I'm still only at the very beginning, but my vocabulary is slowly getting better, my kanji is creeping along, and I've finally made my first steps in actual grammar and sentence construction. Feels like progress and I'm pleased as punch.

Kanji itself still looms, and honestly I continue to waver about the "best" method to study it. The simplest option is to put it first, and grind out all the jouyou kanji plus RTK's and the N1's. That would take about six months at 14-20 hours per week, I bet. And in that time I would make no progress in grammar or listening comprehension. Alternatively, I chip away at it, aided by the small additions in Tae Kim as well, and gradually increase it as my grammar understanding flourishes. Clumsier with more overlap, but at least this way I can study everything at once - grammar, vocabulary, and kanji. 

I'll use a combination of Memrise and Anki for both kanji and Tae Kim, then. The Memrise TK course is voiced, so it will help my speaking practice a lot. Anki I already cannot praise enough. 

I will actually need a solid 6000 words before I'll be able to even half comfortably learn vocabulary via context. Even 95% comprehension means every 20 words on average will be unknown, making reading painfully slow at best, and 98% comprehension is preferred. 6000 words gets me to ~95%, what I would call the bare minimum for reading/listening without constant use of a dictionary. 

My study will be in the following sectors: 

1. Kana review (5-10 minutes a day)
2. Anki learning and review, for vocabulary and kanji (30-45 minutes per day)
3. Memrise learning and review for vocabulary and Tae Kim (30 minutes per day)
4. Grammar textbook study (20 minutes per day)

These time limits are rough estimates and subject to flux. I don't want to do too much and burn out, and I want to stay consistent and avoid wild fluctuations. My nature is extremely erratic, meaning I must ruthlessly force myself to be calm, regular, and disciplined. There's no other way. 

The positive side is that I really, really love this language and that is what drives me. Unlocking the kana door is just the first step and now I've moved into a larger world. 

Let's get to work. 夜敷く！

Katakana Conquering

I'm getting there, but oh so slowly. My little sister is staying with me for a week and a half, so it's made distractions easier than ever. I'm hoping I can meet my Friday goal - Katakana (at least the 107) being mine - and that shouldn't be impossible, because the first 46 katakana are mine. Conquered. And I am reviewing hiragana daily, and twice daily starting tomorrow, assuming I can rejoin the 0500 club. 

I am about to climb this mountain and reach the summit. And it will be good, very good. 

46 down, 61 to go.

Katakana Killer, Hiragana Review, and Kanji Horror

I am pretty solid on the hiragana now, and close to halfway through the basic katakana. I like these shapes a lot, but Helen of Troy they are much harder to recognize and distinguish than hiragana. It's still going to take a lot of work. Still hopeful I'll have them down by Friday end, but it's going to be a huge pain. At least hiragana is mine. I'll drill it twice a day for at least a month, probably three, and then it will be burned into my mind for good. 

Still, I'm over halfway through the first wall. My vocabulary is steadily climbing, and I can recognize almost fifty kanji now. I love this language so damn much. I've only flirted with it at this point, but the kanji sequence is just unbelievably beautiful. For the most part. There are some pretty unbelievable parts too. For example, 女、おんな、means 'woman.' Okay, no big deal. Then the next character I learned was three women together:　姦、かん、'wicked', 'seduce,' 'rape.' Because that's what anyone would think if they saw three or more women gathered together. Obviously.

...If I laughed at that, am I going to hell? 

Hiragana Conquered, Anki Aid, and Kanji Heaven

Hiragana is mine. Just finished the last 36 this evening. I can now slowly and clumsily pronounce Japanese script. Feels good man. Granted, it's purely recognition-based, meaning I can see あ　or ほ and tell you what it says, but going the other way is much sketchier. Writing out the kana ("fifty f*cking times!!" ~Namasensei) is going to help with that. Now I just need to review hiragana once, maybe twice a day. That's like, two, five minutes tops. Means I have much more time to devote to....katakana. Another wall, but this one will go down much faster than hiragana - or at least with less effort. I hope. Anyway, I think I'll have all the kana learned by next Friday easy, thanks to realkana. Seriously that online app was a godsend. I've only beaten hiragana on easy mode (hard mode uses all the different scripts which even now makes me want to tear my hair out), but this is an accomplishment and I am pleased as punch. 

Anki is similarly a godsend. I finally learned how to edit/merge/sort decks, and combined with the new ability to (kind of) read Japanese script, I am going to absolutely devour vocabulary. Learning six thousand words and three thousand kanji suddenly doesn't seem as impossible as it did three days ago. I can already recognize 107 hiragana characters, about twenty or thirty kanji, and about forty or even fifty words, depending on how my decks treat me tomorrow. 

Speaking of kanji. Oh my. It is beautiful. The way the characters build on one another and flow into one another's meanings is breathtaking at times. For example,　休、やすむ, yasumi, meaning 'rest', combines the character for 'man' with the character for 'tree.' The image of a man resting beneath the shade of a maple on a mountain climb is going to be impossible to forget, like a scene right out of Your Name. And so many of them are like that! They might still make me scream in frustration later, but this method of learning the simplest kanji first, learning the radicals, and then seeing how those unfold into more elaborate characters is going to be a wild, thrilling voyage. I can't wait. 

Onto katakana, more vocabulary, and more kanji. After I have conquered the kana I can start the grammar study. I'll say I won't begin Tae Kim till next Friday, but I'm hopeful it will take much less time than that. 

Hiragana Half, Kanji Hell

I've got the 46 basic hiragana solid, and fairly decent on the dakuten. I'll need another day before those are locked down. But I can read a whole bunch more words now, which makes vocabulary much easier. In all I'm comfortably sitting on 71 hiragana, 25 words, and five kanji. At this rate I'll finish the hiragana this week, and by next week at this time katakana should be mine as well. Then I can forever leave romaji behind. 

Realkana is an absolute godsend for this. It's like flashcards on speed. Because the kana follows such a regular pattern, it's like memorizing different first declension Latin nouns. Easy as hell. Then once I get confident, input the random format and master it again. 

I've got Genki 1 and 2, and am debating whether to start it right after learning the kana or waiting until I dig into more of the top thousand vocabulary. Do I use it first or Tae Kim?

Similarly, do I start learning kanji now or do I wait?  And how do I learn it? To be honest, brute-forcing my way through 3,000 kanji seems like a nightmare. English is terrible in its own way too, but at least phonics gets you through almost everything if you're careful enough. But phonics doesn't apply to kanji. Or so it would seem. Apparently the kanji radicals have names, and if you learn those you can often work out the pronunciation of the kanji. Supposedly. 

Kanjidamage and James Heisig's approach seems to make the most sense - systemize these thousands of characters in order of complexity, and approach them with those patterns in mind. I have kanjidamage's 625 kanji deck in Anki already, and Heisig's book, so I might just start trying a lesson from the latter every couple of days and see how far I can get. Unfortunately, his book (at least volume 1) doesn't have the hiragana readings (why?!!?!!?!!), but those would be easy to find, since he's just using the list of jouyou kanji, and hell, even Wikipedia has a table of those, including kana readings. I could even make my own Anki deck as I go along - which is almost certainly what I'll do. 

The plan is settled then:

            1. Finish learning the hiragana this week. Keep chipping away at the Memrise                                vocabulary.

            2. Learn the katakana by next Friday

            3. Start the first few lessons of Heisig now, and when the kana is yours, start making                    your Anki deck based off his system. 

            4. When the kana is yours, start seriously going through Tae Kim, and when you finish it, move on to Genki 1 and then Genki 2. Buy them if you hate studying on a screen - a reward you'll deserve, since by that point you'll have learnt the kana and probably more than a hundred vocabulary words. 

The bulk of my time is just going to be spent learning the ~250 characters that are the kana until I can remember them in my sleep. After that, five minutes a day in review for three months should finish the kana for good. 

This is going to be hard, but so far it's been a blast.