I was having an off day motivation-wise with my language study, but one word in this article completely turned it around:

“Harro”

LOL

Thanks

I know it’s a bit late, but I just wanted to thank you for writing this article. I ran into a member of the ISJR not too long ago. He was an American who learned Korean and Mandarin, and a friend of mine hired him as a Korean tutor not too long ago. I was excited to speak to him, as I always love talking with people who learn languages as a hobby. He already had a vague idea of the method I’m using to learn Japanese (i.e. yours) and, as most people educated in some school system, he found the idea laughable. He was certain that I knew close to nothing. And to test my Japanese skills–get this–he had me try to read some Mandarin. Simplified, nonetheless. Of course, his sentence was filled Chinese exclusive characters, yet he claimed that they were direct cognates in Japanese. I worked out a basic meaning from my kanji knowledge and tried to explain to him why that was an idiotic task, but he just laughed. Anyway, the whole exchange left me feeling embarassed, defeated, and really just pissed.

I spent hours afterwards just reflecting on the experience thinking pretty nasty thoughts, thinking “what’s the point”, and just getting ready to give up. But then I remembered this article. As soon as I identified this person as just another member of the ISJR, all my negative feelings were replaced with feelings of joy and accomplishment. I actually burst out laughing thinking that this guy’s attitude had any bearing on me whatsoever. Afterall, even if I did have to prove something about my Japanese abilities, it certainly wouldn’t be to an English speaker.

Thanks again for writing this. You saved me a whole lot of pointless negativity

I managed to have a nice chat with the lady I dealt with in customs– granted, my Japanese is pretty wretched, but I was still able to communicate with her effectively. (Effectively enough, anyway to get me into the country.)

I had fun talking to a cabdriver in Kyoto. Granted, I wasn’t saying anything deep, but it was fun chit-chatting with someone in his language, and he really appreciated it.

And then I spent an hour or so talking to an older couple in Hiroshima as I was doing my laundry at their laundromat. (It’s 3-4 blocks from the JR there, by the way.) When my Japanese failed, or their English failed, we’d just try to figure it all out with broken bits of whichever language worked. Very nice people.

My trip wasn’t all smiles. There were some ISJR incidents, but I try to forget those as a favor to all the nice people I did meet there.

But it’s amazing how far you can get with just ~お願いします、~下さい、どうもありがとうございました、すみません、これは何ですか？、失礼します… you know, just a few polite phrases. It’s amazing how nice people are when you just treat them politely. (Especially in their own country.)

Anyway, back to my SRS.

http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=300&PN=1

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As a matter of fact, my doubts with this sentence (at first I had taken とう as reading) were that ちょくしゃにっこうとう didn’t sound very nice. I’d prefer など here for that reason.

You’re right about など in the list, I did read about that somewhere.

I know I said 等 for など is a 熟字訓, but it might be more accurately a 義訓 since it’s only 1 character. I believe it’s based on the Chinese usage of the character, which does occur in 漢文. They probably took the kanji originally since it was just about analogous to など in that situation.

You know in most dictionaries there’s the little triangle thingy next to a kanji to indicate it’s not commonly used? In this case など comes with the triangle next to 等, so I think it’s not that commonly used.

Anyway, from the google cache of 広辞苑’s former entry on this question.
「　「～等」は、「とう」と読みます。もし、「など」と読ませるつもりであれば「～など」と平仮名の表記に変えましょう。「～等」は、一般的には法律や条令の文書などで使用されます。その引用であれば、「～等」という表記で問題はありません。しかし、広報紙の記事で使う場合は、住民に対して話しかけるように文章を書くことが望ましいので、「～など」を使ったほうがいいでしょう。」.

Also, it seems to me that in larger sentences with a few different words in a ‘list’, とう is separated by　・、while など is separated by　や or 、

@nacest
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Now that I think about it, I might read 等 as など here, because “ちょくしゃにっこうとう” has a run-on sound to it (what’s a にっこうとう?)…but, とう is also correct. It’s something that a lot of native speakers seem to wonder about, if Google is any guide (try googling: 等　とう　など　読む). My dictionary only has とう for 等, but more authoritative dictionaries like the 広辞苑 apparently have both. So…it’s up to the reader it seems. According to http://q.hatena.ne.jp/1086737631 [not authoritative], a lot of, for example, TV stations arbitrarily fix a reading.
Maybe @quendidil can give us the, how do you say, 411?

I have a lot of single vocabulary words on my srs….i left them there but when I come across them in my reviews, I look them up in my electronic dictionary and copy sample sentences into my srs, especially the words that I don’t fully understand yet

1) 読むことができる上

I narrowed down the possibilities to the following two. The top seems most likely, but I can’t tell with 100% certainty without context. The reading is GUARANTEED to be うえ, if you look at the definitions for じょう, かみ, etc. NONE of them fit.

うえ【上】
《形式名詞》
②(ある事に)加えて｡
③…したのち｡…した結果をふまえて｡｢酒のうえのけんか｣

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とう【等】
《接尾語》
①同種のものを並べあげて､その他にもまだあることを表す語｡など｡等々(ﾄｳﾄｳ)｡〔副助詞的に働く〕

とう is correct here. I think 等 for など is actually an 当て字 (not sure); I sometimes read 等 as など based on the formality/informality of the document, reading of the preceding kanji, and whether it sounds clearer than とう, but don’t tell anyone I said that; it’s just, something I do more or less based on gut feeling…I think I’m right, although of course I may be wrong. ら is confined to personal pronouns, definitely out in this case.

So, if in doubt:
1) READ the defs, all of them if you have to
If still in doubt
2) ASK someone
If you can’t ask someone and you’re STILL in doubt
3) Google, etc.
If that doesn’t work
4) Skip it. You aren’t ready for it. If you cannot figure out the readings using dictionary defs, don’t be afraid to skip it; it is perfectly normal; it is not a bad thing. Consider it a sign that you aren’t ready for the sentence in question yet — even if the sentence seems simple or “important”. You WILL be ready at some point in the future, but for now, leave it out.
A lot of the example sentences in my dictionary (Super 日本語大辞典 are taken from novels; they usually lacked explanatory context, were somewhat arcane, and just generally way over my head. I almost never used them — and I stopped checking them altogether, in the Super 日本語大辞典, you have to click on an icon and open a separate window to display them [this dictionary has shorter, simpler examples sentences that come with the definition text, and longer examples that come separately; I am discussing the longer examples]. But recently, I started looking at them again out of curiosity, and I’m finding a lot of them really useful. The sentences haven’t changed — I have. I’ve grown to the stage where they click for me. You’ll grow, too.

Hope that helps…

the multiple readings thing is exactly my biggest problem right now, too. I often just pick one reading over the others randomly, but I’m always afraid of doing something terribly wrong. Sometimes I realize that I made such a mistake long after having memorized it with my srs…

Khatz, as expected, gave a good solution for some of these cases (the google lookup, which I’ll certainly try immediately), but not all the problems are solved, in my opinion.
I’m talking about the cases in which the doubtful compound is not an idiomatic expression or a fixed noun, but has a more grammatical function. I probably wasn’t very clear, so I’ll make a couple of examples:

···　読むことができる上、···
here, my dictionary tell me that 上　can be pronounced うえ、かみ、じょう and some other less likely stuff. It also tells me that, used as a suffix, it should be うえ　or じょう. Now, how do I know which one to use? I don’t think googling it will give anything useful!

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This is something I’ve added to my SRS ages ago, but I recently started having doubts about how to pronounce 等. Used as a suffix, my dic says it can be read とう、など、ら、but it doesn’t say how to choose the correct one!
So, in these situations, I’m at a loss on what to do… and they’re very frequent lately.

As for the SRS, I more or less stopped SRSing for almost my first 6 months or so in Japan. I found it to be a mistake…I didn’t grow a lot without it [I still forget stuff, and despite fluency, Japanese isn’t yet “sticky” for me, like if I look something up once (esp. a reading), it won’t necessarily “stick” in my mind without further conscious review; my Japanese friends have sticky memorize for Japanese; I have a sticky memory for English, but for Japanese I still have to review something…the best way to manage those reviews that I know of is an SRS]. So, I recommend continuing. I plan to continue using an SRS for years to come…I’ll get to learn all kinds of cool stuff AND remember it. Fluency can be reached in a much shorter time than people generally seriously imagine, but I don’t know about stickiness, I don’t know how long that’ll take; it’s a new frontier for me, too.

The key to making an SRS a daily reality, for me, was to make it mobile. In my case I use it from my cellphone; KhatzuMemo does it, I believe Anki does as well. Before coming to Japan, I tried various mobile devices for using an SRS, but nothing quite panned out, so…I spent a lot of time sitting, haha.

木の実 is an interesting one. Usually, in those cases when you have readings A and B, and A has a definition but B only has a link to A (no definition), then you take A. [Also if if B says it’s a 慣用読み, then you definitely want A, 慣用読み are essentially incorrect; they are common misreadings]. But in this case, both do have definitions. That’s when you Google:
木の実　このみ　きのみ

From what I read here (via here ):

現在では，「このみ」と読むほうが一般的であるといえよう。
So このみ is considered the standard today. The article goes on to say that some rare cases might warrant きのみ…I’d say just stick to このみ or throw the sentence out (delete it) altogether. Nice find…I’d have gone with きのみ without thinking…

If in doubt, delete, skip…keep to sentences that juuust stretch your knowledge, that give you juuust one more piece of information. Too little and you’re not learning, too much and you’re out of your depth at that stage in your learning. I’m sure you’ll have no trouble finding your middle ground.

I’ve recently been enjoying using dramanote as I watch through various dramas. Reading the description of what you’re seeing on the screen at the same time you see it is highly useful. It seems that for a lot of physical actions, that visual definition is worth its weight in gold. (Now I just have to find a way to add the clips to my SRS…) That definitely seems to have helped me avoid trying to visualize actions based on the definition. I found in several cases I was able to come up with images in my mind that matched the definition, but were not correct. On further reflection, a lot of that may have been my own fault for skipping over an unknown word or two in the definition.

Here’s one example of a word where I’m not sure which reading to go with: 木の実. The definition for このみ is “木になる実．きのみ．” and the definition for きのみ is “木になる実．このみ．” I’m a bit at a loss when I run into this type of problem — I’m not sure how to pick one, short of going and asking a native speaker. I want everything in my SRS to rock-solid in terms of correctness, so my general approach is to delete the entry and wait until I see it with furigana, or hear it on TV.

1) you got me using the srs and i have about 2200 entries. but almost ALL of them are japanese-english. and (forgive me for i knew not what i was doing) many of them aren’t sentences. so now i’m wondering if i should just just scrap it all and start over j-j with new sentences or should i try to go in and edit the existing ones to j-j and full sentences.

2) how crucial do you think the srs is after a certain point? i mean, after i get my japanese to a certain point i intend to go back and polish off my spanish which is already pretty tight. i can read books in spanish pretty easily and wonder if i should bother with the srs or just go all spanish all the time with movies, books and music. the reasoning being is that the srs just seems like a bit of a hassle sometimes. i’ve been sitting in front of the thing for like 5 or 6 hrs. a day lately for japanese and i’m getting a bit burned out. i am seeing big improvements in vocab. and kanji readings, though. so, would you advise against abandonging the srs after a point?