First of all, an admission of guilt.

I have misled you.

In some of my SRS item examples, I have shown some reeeeeeeearry long sentences.

Wait, hold on, Kung Fu Hustle is on, and its the final fight against the Axe Gang and the frog guy. BRB…

…I love when he kicks the guys and it makes a bell-ringing sound…

K, I’m back. Yeah, so it’s all my fault. Part of it has to do with the fact that Japanese has the structural power to handle the creation of very long sentences. Since it doesn’t require the repetition and restatement of pronouns (what one might call “subjects” in English), it can create multiple, clause-length modifiers for a single “subject”, without confusing the reader. Or something like that, I dunno — I read this in a book about Japanese (a Japanese one, of course).

So, like, at some level, I thought it would be good for me to put long sentences in the SRS. Also, I probably wanted to show off that I could handle it, you know, prove how leet I was — I don’t like doing this as much as it may seem, but this is a website about how you can get reeeeeeeearry good at Japanese, so some amount of “demonstration” is probably a necessity.

Anyway, I was wrong.

Shorter Items

SRS sentence items. Yes they should be sentences, but you must kiss. That’s right, make out more. Get the tongue in there and…NO! I mean KISS: Keep It Short and Sweet. Sentences, yes; books, no. Break up long sentences if you must, I find that commas, pronouns, and particles/prepositions generally represent a good breaking point. If there is no clean, natural breaking point, then perhaps just break by length. Either way, you may or may not want to use ellipsis marks (…, ・・・) to mark your break. You might also consider incuding the original, full-length sentence in the answer section, for reference.

Right now (June 2008), I have an absolute hard upper limit of 10 characters on my Chinese sentence items, with most items being 6-8 characters long. It’s a bit more fluid for Japanese, but a hard upper limit 30 characters (kanji-kana mix), with most items being 10-15 characters long, seems about right. Earlier in your journey, you might want to go for even shorter Japanese sentences, in the 5-10 character range.

Remember: a long sentence is nothing but a bunch of short sentences stuck together. And even if a sentence looks simple, sometimes you need to make it even simpler for yourself.

Here are some examples, mostly from Momoko (source sentence and resultant sentence only shown):

• Source Sentence: 「マハティールとアブドラの対立は激しさを増し、マハティールは５月１９日、自分が３０年かけて作ってきたＵＭＮＯを脱退し「アブドラが辞めないかぎり復党しない」と捨てぜりふを発した。」
• Resultant Sentence:「捨てぜりふを発した。」
• Quoted From: Tanaka News, 国父の深謀

• Source Sentence: 「中村によると、我々の現代社会は『準備社会』だ。」
• Resultant Sentence:「現代社会は『準備社会』だ。」
• Quoted From: スロー・イズ・ビューティフル―遅さとしての文化

• Source Sentence: 『「もう、今を犠牲にするのはやめよう」という彼らの感覚は、必ずしも「今さえ良ければそれでイイ」という投げ槍な刹那主義と同じではない筈だ』
• Resultant Sentence:「必ずしも・・・投げ槍な刹那主義と同じではない」
• Quoted From: スロー・イズ・ビューティフル―遅さとしての文化

• Source Sentence: 「 21世紀初期，先進機械人的發展步伐越來越快，其中日本更是機械人科技的領導者。」
• Resultant Sentence:「先進機械人的發展步伐・・・」
• Resultant Sentence:「發展步伐越來越快」
• Resultant Sentence:「其中日本更是・・・領導者。」
• Quoted From: 2077日本鎖國

• Source Sentence:「アンパンマンが島に下りて見ると、岩の割れ目の中から泣き声が聞こえて来ます」
• Resultant Sentence:「アンパンマンが島に下りて見る」
• Resultant Sentence:「泣き声が聞こえて来ます」
• Quoted From: アンパンマンとあおばひめ

Delete (or Edit)

Sucky sentence items. They’re different for everyone. But everyone has them. You’ll know them when you see them. You’ll feel it. The dread. I see you looking at that sentence item. Yeah, you struggled to find it. Yeah, you entered it. Yeah, it seems important to know. But you know what? You’ve gone your entire life up to now not knowing that sentence; if it really matters, it’ll come up again. Right now, all it’s doing is sucking up your time and energy. Remember, you want to get QUANTITY of repetitions here. An item that’s sucky is a weed — feeding off the nutrients intended for all the other sentences. Delete it. Edit it if you really feel like it. But if editing feels like a waste of time, and for me it often does, then deletion is definitely the way to go.

Think of deletion as pruning or weeding — cleaning out a minority of overly burdensome items so that the majority can flourish. With sentence items, utilitarianism really works: the greatest good for the greatest number.

Length is not the only reason to delete a sentence item. Sentence items you just don’t quite “get”, or that you’re afraid might be wrong or awkward, also make good candidates for deletion.

This is Supposed to be Fun

Remember, sentences is not S&M. If it hurts, then it’s bad. No means no. Doing sentences should be like…popping bubblewrap. Requiring conscious effort, while being relatively easy and SUPER satisfying. Not to mention begging for repetition in an almost addictive way (addiction’s not the problem — it’s the object of addiction that matters). Doing sentences should make you feel like doing other sentences. If it doesn’t, then be aware that the fault probably lies neither with you nor with the language in question, but in individual items causing you dread. Get rid of them like you did your ’80s clothes.

OK, so Momoko told me that a lot of people might have trouble picturing what the sentence-picking process really looks like. And, now that I think about it, I agree with her. So here’s an example of how I went about picking some sentences just now. The example uses Chinese and Japanese, but I’m sure you can take some info away for use with any language.

I was looking at this sentence:

【明報專訊】美國電影協會大中華區營運總監何偉雄透露，本港點對點（BT）下載猖獗，單是該會2004年便發現有2400宗本港用戶在互聯網上傳送盜版電影的個案，較03年的107宗激增21倍，但他相信這只是侵權問題的冰山一角，因估計全球現時每日有60萬個電影侵權檔案在網上流傳，粗略估計每日損失逾3000萬元。

It’s huge. So I decided to break it up more or less into clauses along comma breaks. So I pick the first clause:

美國電影協會大中華區營運總監何偉雄透露，本港點對點（BT）下載猖獗

But I was still lost; I didn’t yet understand this sentence, nor did I get the clause (”yet” being the operative word). I decided to skip it for now; after a few days or weeks or months of practice, I’ll be ready for it; I may not come back to this exact sentence, but some sentence like it will certainly come up, and when it does, I’ll be ready.

Nevertheless, skipping doesn’t automatically mean nothing concrete can be learned — I can still pick up the two words (in this clause) whose readings I didn’t know or was otherwise unsure about. Those would be:

• chāngjué【猖獗】
• tòulù【透露】

I go find these dictionary entries for them, complete with example sentences:

tòulù【透露】
（秘密などを）漏らす,漏れる;（意志・表情などを）現す,現れる．
¶～風聲/消息を漏らす．
¶秘密mìmì～出去了/秘密が漏れた．
¶她臉上～出一絲悲傷bēishāng/彼女の顔にかすかな悲しみの色が現れた．
¶事件的真相～出來了/事件の真相が明らかになった．
¶把這個情況故意gùyì～給某mǒu報社/この情報をわざと某新聞社に漏らす
【関連】liúlù【流露】

chāngjué【猖獗】
（１）はびこる．猛威をふるう．
¶流行病～/流行病が猛威をふるう．
¶這個地區過去風沙fēngshā～/この地區は以前,砂嵐の荒れ狂うところだった．
（２）〈書〉倒れる．傾き倒れる．

In the definition for chāngjué【猖獗】, it turns out I’m not particularly familiar with the Japanese phrase “猛威をふるう”. I can basically tell what it means, but I want more context — a clearer understanding — so I Google “猛威をふるう” and find some sentences [from reliable sources such as online versions of reputable magazines, reputable sites and the like] that use it. These I add into my SRS, like so:

QUESTION:

「2006年末は電話スパムが猛威を振るう」

ANSWER:

もうい【猛威】〔病気や風などの〕激しい威力｡すさまじい勢い｡

ふる･う【振るう】《他動詞五段活用》
②それが中に含み持っている力を外に出して盛んに働きかける｡十分に､また盛んに､その力を発揮する｡大いに駆使する｡｢熱弁を振るう｣
《参考》｢揮う｣とも書く｡

QUESTION:

マイクロソフト、猛威を振るうワームの駆除ツールを提供◆

ANSWER:

もうい【猛威】〔病気や風などの〕激しい威力｡すさまじい勢い｡

ふる･う【振るう】《他動詞五段活用》
②それが中に含み持っている力を外に出して盛んに働きかける｡十分に､また盛んに､その力を発揮する｡大いに駆使する｡｢熱弁を振るう｣
《参考》｢揮う｣とも書く｡

Now, after adding and clarifying the Japanese that needed clarifying, I’m finally ready to add the Chinese sentences. I won’t show them all, just a couple of examples. Here goes:

QUESTION:

這個地區過去風沙猖獗◆

ANSWER:

liu2xing2bing4 chang1jue2 ◆
流行病が猛威を振るう。

chāngjué【猖獗】
（１）はびこる．猛威をふるう．

もうい【猛威】〔病気や風などの〕激しい威力｡すさまじい勢い｡

ふる･う【振るう】《他動詞五段活用》
②それが中に含み持っている力を外に出して盛んに働きかける｡十分に､また盛んに､その力を発揮する｡大いに駆使する｡｢熱弁を振るう｣
《参考》｢揮う｣とも書く｡

QUESTION:

這個地區過去風沙猖獗◆

ANSWER:

zhe4ge0 di4qu1 guo4qu4 feng1sha1 chang1jue2 ◆
この地區は以前、砂嵐の荒れ狂うところだった。

chāngjué【猖獗】
（１）はびこる．猛威をふるう．

あれくる･う【荒れ狂う】《自動詞五段活用》
★②波･風などがひどく激しくなる｡｢荒れ狂う波｣

So there you have it. I’m always working to expand my knowledge, but only ever by one small step — one small quantum — at a time. Never too much, never too big a jump.

As you can see from this example, learning Chinese by laddering through Japanese offers a lot of opportunity to improve proficiency in both languages. [Although, I still think it’s better to use the target language as its own base language…laddering is my little experiment in doing two things at the same time].

FYI, I didn’t bother with the rest of the original long sentence. Although suddenly it looks much more do-able now than it did earlier…

Could life be better? I submit that it could not!! No, I know it could, but DANG…it’s pretty good right now. Why? Why, you ask? Because you can buy the entire script (yes, the actual text as spoken by each character, plus a little bit of scenario/stage direction for clarity) of Tiger & Dragon [plus the prequel] in book form! Woohoo! My local library had it, and I’ve been reading it today, and it is, what is the word — the bomb.

Anyway, it sounds like good fun for all you drama lovers out there. By the way, I think other TV dramas also have book-form scripts/screenplays. However, you should be careful to actually confirm the contents before you buy these, since I noticed that the book-forms of, at least, American dramas like Prison Break and 24 are more like novelizations (less strict on rendering character dialogue exactly as it was said in the show) than scripts.

I can’t believe it took me this long to find out about stuff like this…

By the way, the collective name for these is シナリオ本(ぼん） — “scenario books”.

[New information: w00t! You don’t have to buy the book! Many TV drama scripts are available online here. Here’s the Tiger & Dragon one! [all main episodes…no prequel in sight, though…]

Here is a really cool post about the need for input at bilingualmente. It’s right on the money with the problem of thinking in your base language instead of in your target language, and how to solve it. I was just discussing this with Momoko yesterday. Other than failing to systematically learn kanji in large quantity, another major reason people have trouble with Japanese even after taking classes in it, is that the textbooks, perhaps by nature of being written in English, tend to focus on the parts of Japanese that work the most like English — it’s easier to explain and easier to grade — after all, no one wants to discuss how to use “やっぱり” or “ていうか” or “って”: that might actually take some thought or even (gasp) require a change in methodology. Unfortunately, the Japanese that is structured like English (or that has analogues in English) is only a very small part of the language, and it’s certainly not the part that most Japanese people use. Real Japanese is not “hard”, it’s just different; it is a different paradigm from Germanic or even Indo-European languages. In order to use Japanese properly, let go of who you were and do things the Japanese way — and that goes for any language, really.

You’ve got to paradigm-shift! Diversify, optimize, realize! OK, now I’m just being silly.

There’s an article written a while back in the Scientific American that discusses what makes someone an expert in something. I found a lot of parrallels with learning sentences (these are the small chunks/quanta that the article discusses) and spaced repetition. You shouldn’t be reading English ;), but do check it out for some quick insight or whatever.

A lot of you have posted various quite valid concerns about monolingual dictionaries. Perhaps you’re too slow with them. You have to look up words in order to understand the word you looked up in the first place.Et cetera.

To me, all of that only underscores why we need to be using monolingual dictionaries. If you can’t understand it, it means you need to work on it. Now, sometimes the best strategy with something you don’t understand is to skip over it and pick some other low-hanging fruit. But this is not entirely the case with monolingual dictionaries (monodics? can I call them that?　monodics?).

If it still hurts your soul, all that extra dictionary time you are spending, just think of it this way: at its core, a monodic is nothing but a book — a book written in the language you are wanting to learn. Since, presumably, you are wanting to learn that language, being able to read books in that language is also something you want (need) to do — the fact that a book is in entirely in Japanese is reason enough for a Japanese learner to own it and be reading it. And guess what else? This book, the monodic, is not like other books: it’s self-referential. A self-referential book that contains many if not most of the secrets of the language you want to learn. Sounds like magic — indeed, in a very real sense, it is.

Dude, you’re getting a monodic.