I could have. Maybe. I didn’t…and don’t…know enough Japanese to know just how much of a crossover there is between Hanzi and Kanji, nor did I really know which characters were exclusive to Japanese, which characters had been simplified (I’ve noticed Japan turns 國 into 国), which characters had nearly entirely different meanings or are used in entirely different ways, etc.

And, of course, that’s setting aside all the Hanzi which fall outside of Japan’s 常用漢字 list.

I actually tried using the Heisig method as he outlines, following along with those first few chapters, but as I recall I kept running into key words for characters I already knew which didn’t seem to fit with the Mandarin meaning I had come to know. In the end, it just didn’t seem to be worth the risk of pounding my way all the way through Heisig only to discover a good portion of my Hanzi had just been Kanjified out of all understanding.

In the end, though, it isn’t that difficult without Heisig directly guiding you. I would even go so far as to say it makes the process somewhat easier; you can choose exactly the keywords that you know will stick, customized to suit your own tastes and interests. All through the learning process, there are little traces of you. My keywords, for example, are literally overflowing with references to everything from Big Trouble in Little China to World War II (擊 = Panzer attack!) to various irritating habits of certain family members.

If Heisig did it on his own, no reason the rest of the world can’t. It’s more a matter of streamlining and convenience than anything to have the keywords given to you in advance.

>Question here: Did listening only to Chinese podcasts/music/videos help you understand, at all? Not just get used to the language, but to actually understand? Just curious. Either way, an inspiring story!

Somewhat. Especially in the cases of movies I had already seen and knew well in English, picking up new vocabulary was easy. When you know that a character is named ‘elastigirl’ in English, and people in the Mandarin dub start calling her 彈性女超人, it isn’t hard to figure out what 彈性 means, for example. And, of course, there are cases where context makes it really obvious; when a military commander yells ‘開火!’ and everyone starts shooting, what else do you need?

Mostly, though, for me it acts as a reinforcer of what I’ve been studying in the SRS. There are few greater languages rushes than listening to a movie you’ve heard on your Ipod about a billion times and suddenly realizing that a given sentence you’ve heard about a billion times suddenly makes sense….completely, 100%…because of something you just added to the SRS the night before. There are also few better ways to insure that you won’t be forgetting the meaning of that sentence anytime soon.

> All of the translated English games I’ve found only have translated text; the audio is still English. This MIGHT still work for RPGs like Baldur’s Gate, which actually have fairly little audio but RTS’s are out of the question.

I think that’s really the best you can hope for, and it’s still one-up on Mandarin. There’s plenty of Western RPGs available…more than I was expecting, as I was thinking that as a fellow Asian country devoted to the cult of 可愛 they would prefer the strict narrative and spiky hair of JRPGs…but none translated into Chinese outside of the manual.

Ah well. When I start Japanese (as of now, I’m looking to 1st of September as D-Day), I’m definitely going to get some RPGs, turn down the audio and listen to Japanese music and audio while I play. I wonder if I can find a translated version of Fallout and Fallout 2?

All of the translated English games I’ve found only have translated text; the audio is still English. This MIGHT still work for RPGs like Baldur’s Gate, which actually have fairly little audio but RTS’s are out of the question.

You can use RPGs for Japanese at least. All the Final Fantasies, for one.
There are also some translations of English games available, like Oblivion and Baldur’s Gate. The audio might still be in English though; I downloaded Warcraft III in Japanese recently only to find out that the audio was untranslated, after 3 missions I decided to uninstall it; my main purpose for intending to use the game was to go through the campaign in Japanese, the gameplay controls involve an incredibly small amount of language use in any language and I decided that it wouldn’t do much good.

I’m currently downloading a few other games on Share, I hope they won’t be all undubbed, especially the RPGs.

エロゲ are also good for listening and reading practice; and actually especially those based mainly on H-scenes for beginners-intermediates. The language is fairly easy at that level and the voices loud, clear and natural. You’ll also pick up some sexual vocab along the way. =p

I didn’t. I just wrote that in a really confusing way. I was trying to make a reference to the fact that anti-moon suggests playing adventure games, gave Monkey Island as the first example that came to mind (no Chinese version, so far as I know, but to be fair I haven’t looked hard), and then segued off into the game I was really talking about: Civilization IV.

Basically, what I was attempting to get at is that since the adventure games recommended by anti-moon have both virtually disappeared from the shelves and likely were never translated into Mandarin/Japanese in the first place, a good strategy game like Civ IV is a very good replacement. It becomes more obvious when you see I mention expansions packs and an in-game encyclopedia, which would be really weird with a LucasArts adventure game.

It took me a while, but I managed to work out a way around it. Once you find a video you like, copy the address and go to http://www.kisstudou.com and paste it in to the 开始GO box. What it will spit out is a list of all the addresses of the 7 minute sections that youku has turned the video into. Then you can just go along and “copy link location” of each one into a separate tab and then after pressing enter, a box should come up asking whether to save or to open the file. It shouldn’t take too long, and in the end you will have a lot of flv files (try to change the names as you save them to something like part01, part02 etc). Then use a program called Movica to combine them all into 1 flv file. After that I normally use SUPER to convert it to mp4 to watch on my PSP, or mp3 to listen to.

Now off to watch some Casino Royale, my most recently downloaded and dubbed movie!

PS If you know of any easier way to get the files downloaded, tell me!

It’s mostly a formality, since the serious student of one will usually have to learn the other to some extent anyway. As much as I want to be able to read the Chinese classics, for example, it would also be really nice to not have to restrict my written communication to the tiny, tiny fraction of Chinese who still use fanti in everyday life.

> You could easily do the reverse with nciku, I find the definitions it uses are often easier than that kid’s dictionary, and they have loads more example sentences.

I remember having problems with translating before, probably related to those characters which are separate in fanti but which are combined for jianti, but you’re right, it shouldn’t be a big deal. I’ll give nciku a try!

> With the movies, there is actually a lot more than just pixar ones. Just go to youku.com (Chinese version of Youtube) and search something like 欧美电影国语版. I have been watching Shawshank Redemption, Fight Club, Batman Begins and Spiderman, and also ripping the audio onto my PSP and just listening whenever.

…

I love you.

God, all this time, and it wasn’t the Chinese as a whole being screwed over in the dubbing department; it was just the Taiwanese! You can’t find ANYTHING dubbed here unless children are expected to be it’s major audience.

Life is good.

*begins the downloading spree of a lifetime*

With the movies, there is actually a lot more than just pixar ones. Just go to youku.com (Chinese version of Youtube) and search something like 欧美电影国语版. I have been watching Shawshank Redemption, Fight Club, Batman Begins and Spiderman, and also ripping the audio onto my PSP and just listening whenever.

PS They have Star Wars dubbed…search for 星球大战国语版

Not much, unfortunately. The news still regularly kicks the crap out of me. I can get a vague idea of what’s going on, but you’re right, they talk fast! Definitely an area I need to spend more time on.

As for the monodics, I’ve been used the couple Khatzumoto had the courtesy to link to some time back.

http://140.111.34.46/jdict/main/cover/main.htm

and,

http://140.111.34.46/newDict/dict/index.html

I use the kid’s dictionary for example sentences, since the adult dictionary has a tendency to draw it’s example sentences from 紅樓夢, 論語, 西遊記, etc., which are at least a few centuries out of date. They might illustrate the usage of the word, and I would like to read them someday, but I’m worried I might end up being like a Chinese guy who learns English primarily through constant exposure to Shakespeare; utterly hilarious to native speakers, but probably not at the cutting edge of modern spoken language.

I haven’t used the nciku.com dictionaries mostly because they’re in 簡體字. Though I’m definitely going to tackle simplified in the future, I’ve been told since the beginning that it’s much easier to master 簡體字 from 繁體字 than the reverse, and if you don’t master fanti you’re left cut off from the overwhelming bulk of pre-Mao Chinese history and culture. Well, that, and I am (for various reasons) an unrepentant fanti snob. After so much time looking at the traditional characters, simplified always looks….incomplete.

Yes, that’s even better advice. vgambit, listen to the dubbed versions of stuff you already know in English! Rip the audio onto an ipod or whatever and just walk around listening to it; you’ll know roughly what’s going on, and the experience will be considerably easier to get used to.

Just make sure it’s something that’s fun to watch and listen to without necessarily understanding every word. My Dinner with Andre might lack the prequisite amount of things blowing up and people hacking each other into pieces.

On that note, you Japanese learners are lucky! It sounds like you have plenty to choose from in the dubbing department, but so far as I can see, very little foreign outside of animated movies and shows ends up being dubbed in Mandarin. Therefore, I’ve pretty much been steadily buying up the catalogue of Pixar and Miyazaki films. I’d kill to be able to buy the Star Wars OT in Mandarin, but no go.

In other words, vgambit: reflect on how good you’ve got it in comparison!

Oh, and about the monodics, which one(s) do you use? I just noticed today that nciku.com now has 3 dictionary databases they use, and one of them is monolingual, and really quite good. Check it out!

if you can’t handle 3 hours a day listening to mostly incomprehensible language, then maybe you aren’t ready to live in another language. Try 7 or so hours of forced immersion and not understanding anything! (Yeah it was my stupid fault for coming to Japan not knowing the language.) Still, I could have gone to my apartment and wrapped myself in the warmth of English-language internet, but I said, “No, I’d like some more Japanese please.”

Sure, you can say that my being in Japan provided me with real motivation to learn the language. But that’s just because you seem to be living in some alternate universe where listening to English in your car is an option! That’s not even the issue. The issue is how are you going get to a point where you can understand and enjoy what you are listening to! AJATT is one way to get there. If you haven’t found the will to overcome your language barrier, it’s because you haven’t made it imperative. In your mind, it’s still a choice. When your life is in Japanese, your studies become a must. When you do your studies, your Japanese life gets easier.

If you’re still at the beginning and not understanding, it is important to seek out input that you can understand. But it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t listen to stuff you don’t understand. The mind is powerful and picks up so much without you even working. So if incomprehensible stuff is all that’s available, then listen. If you must concentrate on some other activity (SRS, homework/work in English, making dinner) you should still have this playing in the background because your subconscious mind is still working its magic. If you’re worried about being bored by it in the car, then pick things with interesting voices, with music, with theatrical sounds, etc. (I like having JUNK Podcast that Khatzumoto mentioned on in the background. They are funny and I enjoy it even though I only understand maybe 5% of it.) When you’re driving along listening to this stuff that you don’t understand, have fun imitating the intonations and emotions you hear. If you hear a word you know, repeat it out loud. You should be interacting with your audio.

Now, it’s very true that comprehensible input will go a lot further a lot faster. It’s just hard to find, especially right at the beginning. I suggest visiting lingq.com They have some good stuff for starting out. It’s still beta for Japanese, but it’s a start for some beginner audio. It’s just that the topics aren’t always that interesting. Scour the internets for beginners podcasts. Ivan’s advice isn’t so irrelevant either. Who says you can’t rip the audio from movies you know in English? It will provide instant entertainment. Do you what you have to!

All that said, someone needs to give me a kick in the pants because I have yet to go 100% Japanese. (I keep visiting this site, for instance.) I live in Japan and I still lead maybe a 50-75% English life. It just happens that my passions are second/foreign language acquisition and education. I could (and just about do) read about linguistics and teaching every day. I decided (mostly subconsciously) that it would be too hard to turn that part of my life (reading teaching blogs/message boards/news/scientific articles/etc) into AJATT. So I haven’t. But reading about your “problem” has shown me how pathetic my excuses are.

This probably isn’t of much use to you, since you’re talking about audiobooks, but during the initial period I found the best way to overcome the ‘boredom through language incomprehension’ was to watch movies that were extremely visually oriented. For example, I used the movie 英雄 (Hero); lots of flashy sword fights, lots of pretty colors, more than enough to distract me from the fact that what they were saying was (at the time) mostly non-sensical.

Nowadays, some of the dialogue from that movie is embedded permanently in my mind from hearing it so often.

你們記住。秦國的箭再強。可以破我們的城﹐滅我們的國! 可亡不了趙國的字﹗
今日你們要學到趙國文字的精義﹗

Oh, yeah. Growing up, I played those games constantly. Secret of Monkey Island, Grim Fandango, Day of the Tentacle, Sam and Max, etc.; I understand perfectly how they could be amazingly useful for studying English.

Unfortunately, the way I typed the above was a bit confusing. I was trying to append a note about Civilization IV at the bottom. So far as I know, they don’t have a 中文 version of Monkey Island. God, I wish they did, especially since by now it would be dirt cheap, but there’s a frustrating tendency to find a game you really want to play only to flip the box and find the dreaded words on the back: 語言表達方式: 英文游戲﹐中文手冊. (Basically, ‘Language display: English gameplay, Chinese manual.)

I’ve been a computer gamer for a long time, so to me the five characters 繁體中文版 (Traditional Chinese edition) on a game box are like a bell to Pavlov’s dog. Those are the minority, though, and I’ve more than once felt myself near to being driven away from the immersion environment by the realization that I STILL haven’t played Mass Effect and they don’t have a Mandarin version available. It’s just sitting there at the store, taunting me with it’s Chinese manual and English gameplay. 殘酷極了! *sob*