Gather round, children, gather round. As the title suggests, the good folk at Amazon.cn sold me a copy of “Independence Day”, DVDed up and Mandarin-dubbed, for the sum of approximately $3 (I LOVE Amazon.cn). And you know what happens when I get a copy of the President’s speech in “Independence Day”. Anyway, enjoy. Audio here.

早上好。
再過一小時，
這裡的飛機將與世界各地的盟友並肩戰鬥。
你們將參與人類歷史上最大的空戰。

人類。這個詞今天對於我們所有人將有新的意義。
我們不能再為小小的分歧而內耗。
我們將為共同的利益團結起來。

也許是上帝的安排，今天是獨立日。
你們將再一次為自由而戰。
不是為了反抗暴政、壓迫和迫害。
而是免遭毀滅。
是為生存的權力而戰鬥。

如果我們今天能夠勝利，
七月四日將不僅只是美國人民的假日，
而且將使全世界人民發出同樣的吶喊：

“我們不會默默地走向黑暗！”
“我們不會就這樣坐以待斃！”
“我們要生活下去！”
“我們一定要生存！”

今天我們要慶祝自己的獨立日！

It’s here. And it can be yours to fall in love with right now. Today. It’s a member of the illustrious line of AJATT products, and it’s called My First Japanese Storybook. Or, as we Japanese like to call it:

マイファースト初めてのジャパニーズ絵本。

Manipulatively-Worded Promise

• “My First Japanese Storybook” might make you thin, pretty, happy, safe and popular insofar as there is a nonzero hypothetical probability that…OK, no it won’t. But…in theory, what if it did? No? No…

What the…?

OK, seriously though — here’s the deal. It’s:

• An illustrated storybook, much like the kind you so enjoyed as a child, back when everything was safe and happy and…stuff.
• 24+ pages
• Bilingual (Japanese text + English translation)
• Illustrations on every page
• In PDF format (so, an electronic book), with
• Furigana on all kanji (yeah, baby)
• A sentence flashcard pack for use with an SRS (a lot like “MFSP”, with even cooler formatting), containing phrases from and inspired by the book.
• MP3 audio recording of its content (it’s like having your virtual mommy read aloud to you!)

Who The…?

My First Japanese Storybook is intended for anyone at any level of Japanese, from egg to caterpillar to butterfly. As long as you’ve gone through Remembering the Kanji and know your kana, then you, too can read and enjoy the book — thanks in no small part to the ruggedly handsome support materials (translation, SRS deck).

I Want Mine! Gimme One!

And you can have one.

My First Japanese Storybook: $21.95

Buy It. Try It. No Likey? No Payey!

Let me be Khatzumoto with you: I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m still new at this product-making stuff. Maybe you’ll like the storybook, maybe you won’t. So, as with all its predecessor products, My First Japanese Storybook comes with a 100%, no-questions-asked refund guarantee. If you don’t like it, just email qrg at ajatt dot com. One word: “refund”, will suffice -– you don’t need to give a reason. You’ll get your money back, and you can keep the storybook for free. That’s just how we roll up in here at “the ‘JATT”.

May I See A Sample First?

Just buy it. And if you don’t like it, ask for a refund. Buy it. Try it. No likey? No  payey. That’s part of the point of the refund policy — it allows you to buy with impunity, and me to sell without guilt. No buyer wants to be saddled with a product they don’t like, right? And this seller doesn’t want to give you one, either. Hence the very simple and open refund policy.

Your happiness matters more to me than rapidly devaluing dollars,   so…use the refund policy. There are other AJATT products already out there, and there will be even more in the future — you only need pay for the ones that you do like.

Rather than try to figure out whether you’re going to like the product before the fact, you can make that decision after you buy it and use the real thing. The real thing is the sample. AJATT readers — that’s you — are a smart, good-looking and honest bunch, so…don’t worry…I trust you . Go on…

In arithmetic, whenever we have an expression, we don’t just go left-to-right, and we don’t just run our calculations all willy-nilly. There is what is called the standard order of operations. These are the rules of engagement, the sine qua non, what the French call the without which not, of doing arithmetic.  One acronym for these rules is PEMDAS: parentheses, exponentiation, multiplication/division, addition/subtraction.

You’ve been doing arithmetic a long time, but you’ve probably only started SRSing relatively recently, SRS being a more recent invention than arithmetic. In SRSing we also have an order of operations AKA precedence rules AKA order of priority.

As with arithmetic, the SOOP (SRS order of priority) — yet another meaningless acronym — tells us what to do first, if there is any doubt. Unlike the arithmetic rules, the SOOP is not hard and fast. It’s just an arbitrary set of guidelines to make our lives easier and prevent the harried, type-A, OCDish behavior you sometimes see exhibited by people who are SRSing — behavior that leads them to burn out, give up, and curse this SRSing thing as “useless” or “not for me”.

So here it is, the SOOP, which can further be abbreviated as DADRA (how do I keep coming up with these?!): Don’t Add, Delete, Review, Add.

0. Don’t Add

• The zeroth rule. Not adding anything to your SRS deck is the most “important” activity, in that it takes precedence over all the others. If in doubt, don’t add anything to the SRS. Just don’t. Too hard to add? Don’t add it. Can’t be bothered? Don’t be. When something really needs to be added to the SRS, it won’t feel like a chore at all.

1. Delete

• The first rule. Delete. If in doubt, delete stuff. Delete. Delete. Deleted. Baleted. Let it go. There is perhaps nothing more threatening to your long-term SRSing prospects than bad cards. Nothing will drag down your repcount (reviewcount) more quickly and with more certainty, than the existence of large quantities of SRS cards you no longer give a care about. If in doubt, throw it out. Delete. Doesn’t matter if you would, could or should learn it. Delete it.
• What about “essential” language elements like individual kanji and/or kana and/or hangul, etc? Surely these can’t be deleted, right? Right? My original answer to that would have been a “yes, suck it up”. However, over time, my opinion has changed. I have found bad cards to be so destructive to SRSing that it is better to, yes, delete even cards containing essential, fundamental language elements. Call it “lazy processing”: you can always undelete, or re-add the cards later. If the language element is really that essential, you’ll be able to pick up the slack later.
• Important: I personally prefer to delete one card a time. I say, resist the impulse to “push the reset button” — delete entire decks and start from scratch, because this robs you of the opportunity to discover the properties of the cards you do like and are worth keeping. Also, it’s a bit of a binge-purge behavior, which is something you don’t want.

2. Review

• The second rule. Review cards. Do reps. It’s what we might call the most “normal”, “standard”, “vanilla” use of an SRS. Nothing much more to say here. Click. Show back. Set score. Next.

3. Add

• The third rule. If all else fails, add some new SRS cards. Add new cards. Why is this last? What the hockey puck is wrong with you, Khatzumoto? Surely, even you, up on your AJATT cloud, are aware that you can’t delete or review cards without having first added them? Yes, of course, that is true. Remember, the SOOP merely tells us precedence. It tells us what should precede what, what should go first, iff there is any question as to what to do. However, by definition, if there are no cards, then while “don’t add” (the zeroth rule) will work, the first and second rules will default down to this one. What matters is to know that if in doubt, adding cards is the least important thing you can do.

And we’re done. These are just random guidelines I came up with by myself. Yeah, I’m good-looking, but not omniscient. So I’d be happy to hear what you have to share, iff you’re good-looking as well.

Shallowly,

Khatzumoto

So, I read, watch and listen to a lot of what might very generally be called “advice”.

A lot of advice-givers, myself included, can seem to be telling you:

“What you’ve been doing SUCKS! You’re messing up! Do it THIS way!”

And this makes you feel like a schmuck, I mean, a jewelry, I mean…Anyway — so you get busy dutifully struggling to fit your square self into whatever new round hole your advice-giver has prepared.

OK…I’m not going to tell you what do, because the world is already full of that. I’m just going to tell you…I don’t think that that’s the point. I don’t think that it’s the intention of even the most energetic, enthusiastic advice-giver to make you feel like crap and get you frantically re-arranging your life in their image. Certainly it’s not my intention. Good advice is intended to make your life easier, not harder.

Here’s a simple two-step process you may or may not want to try.

1. Read/listen to advice. Mine. Other people’s. Whoever’s.
2. Do whatever the heck you want, whether or not it matches that advice.
   • A lot of the point of good advice is the forest, not the trees. Much of the point of good advice is simply to be exposed to it, rather than to painfully turn yourself into a carbon copy of it.
   • Now, it may well be that turning yourself into a carbon copy is the easiest, least painful, most effective path, or at least the path  that hits the sweet spot — that gives you a maximum of both ease and effectiveness — and if that is the case, then go for it. Imitation is how we learn.
   • But don’t freak out over minutiae. Minor deviations and improvements are normal and even desirable. The basic plan is: take the mold and change it to fit you, you needn’t fit yourself to it. When that Betty Crocker cookie recipe tells you to add two nanograms of rosemary and twirl around ten times while reciting the pledge of allegiance…tell Betty Crocker to get on her skates and truck the puck off: focus on the flour, sugar and Crisco.
   • (Wow, is that the taste of vomit in my mouth?)

…

…

…

OK, I’m over the Crisco now. Let me repeat myself: Of course, if it’s easier to just follow the advice, then do that. But chill.

Don’t be a harried, obedient zealot. Seriously — you’re going to die if you do that. Relax. Don’t be a whiny “if only I had the talent”/”maybe it’s possible for other people but not for me” person. Don’t be an emo-type “it’s all B.S.” person either…or do be these things…but do it quietly. Man who say it cannot be done needs to STFU, and other supposedly Chinese proverbs.

We often go to considerable lengths to protect children from this type of thing; we rarely even allow children to say these types of things. Well, adults are just children with bank accounts and large bodies. Negativity damages their fragile minds just as it does those of children. People who are going to freak out need to try to keep “the children” out of it — and that includes you freaking out at yourself.

By now, the dutiful part of you is all: “but…but…but…article 4, subsection (b), paragraph (iii) of AJATT says…”. Check this out: if you’ve read the advice then it will affect your decisions: you don’t need to worry about that. The point here is that you stop the breathless compliance and mental self-flagellation.

And I bet you’re getting frantic about this advice, too, aren’t you? You’re so earnest, the cuteness makes me giggle. The cyclical irony of giving you advice on how to take advice is not lost on me. “Lost” is lost on me…that show…I dunno, man…

Anyway, let’s review:

1. Read/listen or otherwise expose yourself to advice.
2. Do whatever the heck is most comfortable, workable, sustainable for you. “Obey”, “disobey”, remix — it doesn’t matter. Ultimately, your unique life, preferences and situation are going to call for some degree of very unique, perhaps even counter-intuitive, choice-making. You’re the DJ.

What we’re really talking about here is our making a practical, active distinction between “advice” and “orders”. Namely, that:

• With “advice”, no matter how strongly worded, no matter how handsome the giver (oh, stop!), you always have choice; you always retain the right to refuse and/or reinterpret.
• With “orders”, the presumption is that you have at some point put this right on hold. A lot of military, school and religious activity kind of falls here.

I give advice, not orders. I intend it to be taken as advice. So, do whatever you want. Refuse, accept and reinterpret at will. I would. I did.

You remember the original Tortoises and Hares post, right? Well, I got this really insightful email about it from a virulently handsome man named Chris Espinoza, and I want to share it with you here; I’ve highlighted some of the uber amazing parts for your reading convenience:

I have made a breakthrough in my thinking lately in regards to this language acquisition business, and I am excited about it.

I was trying to understand what bothered me so much about the polyglots out there and also why I felt like my Chinese had stunted. The realization I came to corresponds with your difficulty with Chinese relative to Japanese, I think.

The problem was that I was obsessed with acquisition as an end. I felt like I had something to prove to myself, to my former teachers, to people I had argued with about language, and most of all to Chinese people themselves. I wanted to say, “See? Classes do suck. All you have to do is watch movies! Foreigners can learn Chinese quickly and easily!” Because of this, I tried to find the ultimate acquisition method. I looked at all those Chinese movies, TV shows and books as language acquisition tools. And that was the problem. I forgot that the end was not acquisition, but rather the enjoyment of things and people in that language.

I also started to conflate knowledge/eloquence with seeming like a native. My real ultimate desire is to seem like a Chinese person to Chinese people, to have them feel like I am a part of their social circle, someone they can relate to and have fun with. But I forgot about that. I just thought that if I could read enough books on enough subjects and know all the right words and know all the pop references, I would seem like a native. But in reality I already had enough knowledge and linguistic ability. The problem was attitude. I did not see myself as a Chinese person, but rather, and even worse, I saw myself in opposition to them. Chinese was something to conquer, not to enjoy. In the end, if you want to know Chinese, knowing a lot of stuff and being eloquent is not the key. You could ask someone in English, “Oh, how was class today?” and they could respond, “uh, you know, it was kinda boring, the teacher’s stupid, you know?” There is no linguistic virtuosity there, but I would feel like that person was American, or at least in tune with American sensibilities. Whereas, if I asked the same question to some people in China, they would perfectly recite something they had memorized from a TOEFL book and it just felt so foreign and distant from me.

I had a similar problem with myself in China. I was often with my American friend and Chinese people would always be absolutely blown away by his Chinese. People would be impressed with mine, but it was never the level of amazement that they would have for him. There wasn’t a huge gap between us in our knowledge of Chinese, so I couldn’t figure out where the difference was. I’ve figured out now that the difference was my attitude. I had some problems with Chinese culture, so I felt aversion to them in some ways, and I certainly didn’t want to be them. My friend, however, had developed a sense of Chinese identity, that he was Chinese (even though he is a blue eyed fair skinned American of European descent), and Chinese people sensed that. Some people even went so far as to ask if he was Chinese. Now that I think of it, occasionally, people had a similar reaction to me and I’ve realized those occasions occurred when I was loving some Chinese TV show and felt connected to the culture. Then I would go out and people would be amazed. Nothing had significantly changed about my linguistic knowledge, just the attitude. Unfortunately, these occasions were rare, because I spent most of my time hating Chinese people.

When babies and little kids learn their native languages, they’re not seeing linguistic acquisition as the end; they see it as a means. the end is far more interesting, far more relevant, far more about everything that matters to them. if it didn’t matter it might even be possible that acquisition wouldn’t even take place. They want other things — and acquisition occurs along the way. When I was in elementary/middle school and used to emulate certain things I heard people say, I wasn’t thinking “Now I’ll acquire this word.” I was thinking, “Now I’ll be funny, like this person.” Language, a medium, was just that: a thing I wanted because I wanted stuff that was in it. Somehow, I’ve lost track of that, to some extent, with Chinese.

So, as I move forward now, I am keeping two things in mind:

1. Acquisition is not the goal. Accessing fun stuff in the language is.
2. I want to BE Chinese, not just some weird foreign dude who can make himself understood in Chinese

So, all those arguments about the detail of the acquisition method are much less relevant than I thought before. I could talk about this forever, but I’ll wrap it up here.

Oh, just one more note about the polyglot thing. For some reason, these people claiming to speak 10 languages really bothered me. I couldn’t figure out why. Now I think I got it, it seems their goal is the acquisition of languages, rather than enjoying what’s in the language. Of course, they are enjoying the acquisition itself, but I don’t think that’s enough to be native-like. And that’s why I think they have just slightly above average results even though their methods might make sense. They still see themselves as Americans or Canadians or whatever studying something foreign. However, realizing this, I now might respect the claims of Benny the Irish polyglot more, for example. Maybe it is possible to speak Portuguese and make Brazilians think you are Brazilian in three months, because perhaps Benny believed himself to BE Brazilian for those three months.

I look forward to your feedback,

Chris

Who says “virulently handsome”? Anyway, both Chris and I are looking forward to hearing from you

Remember the fable of the tortoise and the hare? Well, that fable is bollocks. You see, they got the personalities backwards.

In real life, human “tortoises” are laid-back, nonchalant, happy. Meanwhile, human “hares” are destructively disciplinarian, destructively obsessive, and destructively obsessed with quick results.

What happens is that the hares self-flagellate themselves to the point of burnout. Their very obsession with the “race” and “running” it better, faster and longer causes them to come to hate anything to do with “running” and thus avoid it at all costs (here, running = action; race = project).

That’s why hares are always resting and procrastinating instead of moving — it’s not arrogance, it’s self-preservation: hares are refugees from a war being waged by, on and within themselves. They’re not shirkers; they’re not lazy; they’re just trying to get a break from their own mental violence, their constant negative self-talk, their tantalusian expectations.

Hares, under the premise of “delayed gratification” often actually practice “zero gratification“: it’s just never good enough. Ever. They never give themselves the carrot — only the stick. Like Tantalus, they get neither the cool, refreshing water nor the sweet grapes of satisfaction. Only the grapes of, what, wrath? I dunno…

So hares procrastinate and appear to shirk. It’s perhaps a subconscious(?) way for them to hijack/sabotage their own system of cruelty and give themselves at least some carrots, water and sweet grapes between the beatings, hunger and thirst. Neil Fiore talks all about this in “The Now Habit”.

The tortoises, on the other hand, just play their way through the whole thing. They run the “race” not because they have to, but because it’s there. Tortoises screw around, putting one playful, jiggy foot in front of the other. They have so much fun that their victories are practically side-effects (which is a good thing, because moments of victory are far too short to be the be-all and end-all). Yea verily, let it be known that I kid you not — I learned Japanese almost by accident.

Kanji acquisition is a good example of the tortoise-hare dichotomy. Even going at just 10 kanji a day, every day, will have you acquiring 3650 kanji over the course of a year.

Conversely, hare-like attempts to force 100 kanji a day often lead to stress, fatigue and overload. The irony of trying to force too many kanji a day is that it often leads to zero-kanji days, zero-kanji months and even zero-kanji years.

Forced high speed often also leads to poorly remembered kanji — I have seen many people feel the need to start over again from scratch. Where’s the speed in that?

I’m not saying “don’t do 100 kanji a day”. If you can do 100 a day happily, then do. If not, then don’t. Find your sweet spot — everyone’s will be different. Find a number that you can hit every day, no matter how small, and then go with that.

During my US-based Japanese project, the so-called “hardcore” phase of AJATT, I was a tortoise. Japanese has always been a toy for me, just something I screw around with. My Chinese, however, has often been hare-like; it has often become a grim duty, something I should do and have to do fast and have to prove a point to the whole world about — more status symbol than self-contained game. And we all know how well status-symbol-seeking language-learners tend to do (see “English in Japan and Korea” for details).

In my experience, only when I act like a tortoise, do I succeed in long-term projects, Sinic or otherwise. As far as I know, only the tortoise model is sustainable. And that’s the key to anything long-term: sustainability — stamina. The tortoise only seems slower. But because she has a model that she actually sustains, you could say she gets to enjoy the metaphorical “compound interest” of her efforts.

Put away the whips and sticks. Relax. Just do one. Enjoy each step. Savor each bite. Become a tortoise and start winning. Remember, it only seems slower: you’ll get there sooner then you think, and well ahead of any hares — those kids all die of heart attacks, suicide and depression* anyway. Be mellow. Be like a grandparent (think about it: maybe it’s not the advanced age that makes grandparents mellow, but the mellowness that allows them to live to an advanced age). Be like a tortoise.

_{*I don’t know if people clinically die of depression, but…how many sad centenarians have you ever seen? I guess I should say “sadness”, if I’m going to be so vague and non-clinical…oh well .}