Comments on: Turn Yourself Into A Monster: What To Do When People Around You Are Not Encouraging Or Supportive

By: AD

AD — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 20:08:22 +0000

genius article. you say you aren’t smart but you don’t fool me haha.

By: All Japanese All The Time Dot Com: How to learn Japanese. On your own, having fun and to fluency. » Surrogate Mother: The Proper, Correct And Only Way To Do Private Tutoring

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 19:20:56 +0000

[...] enough culturally insensitive comments. The point is: extreme behavior is useful. Extreme praise and kindness can fuel confidence; extreme meanness can fuel reflection and drive; [...]

By: HiddenSincerity

HiddenSincerity — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 21:40:56 +0000

@musume
If your friends are anything like mine where when I first started, they’re just feeling a little insecure that they’re going to loose you to Japan, that you prefer Japanese people over them and that you no longer appreciate the culture they share with you. I know, lame. Once I understood that, it became much easier to deal with them.
Anyway, here’s a paraphrased from memory and PG-ised version of an e-mail I sent to a friend who was the last one to come around to the idea:
“I have to do this. This is no longer a choice for me any more. I have to get fluent, not for anyone else, but me. I want to know what it’s like to speak to [Japanese friends' names] without fumbling my way through. I mean, I want to speak to them like I speak to you. If I met you and I didn’t speak your native language, I probably would be doing the same thing.
And I know it might be scary that I’m not going to be around. And I might not be here for your 21st, or your wedding, but I’ll do my best. Worst comes to worse, I’ll use skype and you can stick me on a chair in the back. But this isn’t something I’m going to quit for you, any more than you’d quit drumming if I asked you to.
I hope you can understand.”

By: Musume!

Musume! — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 10:34:09 +0000

My friends are pretty horrible when it comes to me learning ***. They say stuff like “You aren’t Japanese”. Then I say, I’m no longer foreign because I don’t believe I’m foreign. Then they say “That’s a load of bull, if you were meant to learn Japanese you would have been born on Japanese soil”. Then I say that’s a load of bull.

Any tips for getting past this?

By: hanikas

hanikas — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 03:04:25 +0000

“One day your friends will be begging you to translate Japanese for them.”

AGREED. And this shall be the goal you ought to work towards.
The delight you’ll get (smugness? XD) when their jaws drop and their faces reflect OoO” is wonderful. But never stop studying! Always be as humble as the Japanese (or at least, that’s what the books claim. 「いえいえ。私の日本語まだまだです！」) and strive to be better! Don’t worry what they say.

Although, I can’t quite say much as I haven’t really been shown much resistance to studying Japanese. Well then again, I think I have immuni-fied myself. Because behind me, I remember them shaking their heads and making up random words that sound Japanese (“Toyota! Honda!” is their favourite way of communicating with my sister and I) and generally laughing. But that only propells me to show them that I can do it better!

Besides, you can always swear under your breath in Japanese. It’s not like they understand anyway, right? The best ‘revenge’ (if you’re hell bent on doing so) is to offer to teach them some Japanese phrases. Then proceed to say that “Watashi wa baka desu” means that he/she is pretty. ;D

By: goshinbi

goshinbi — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 18:08:49 +0000

that was a great post. In my case my friends thought I was weird　for learning it, and it was impossible to learn; Until about 3 weeks ago where we got an exchange student from japan, who was quite lost when our principal tried to tell him where his class was. I spoke to him in japanese to the amazement of our principal. I was in the same class as he was and I found out that he was from kansai, and thanks to my learning of anything I can get my hands on I was able to use some kansai ben, and he was quite happy to be able to stop using 標準語. my friends were just watching this in amazement. Their doubts were gone
その話はめっちゃおもろいやった。　:P.

By: Rance

Rance — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 12:59:01 +0000

Thank you so much for this post Khatz. It really helped me. When I sent this email to you, I felt like ****. I cared way more about everyone else’s opinions than my own. Then I actually got the chance to go to Japan for two weeks.vNow I have a much different look on Japanese (and life, for that matter). As long as I’m doing what I love, not any other opinion in the world matters!

By: kevin

kevin — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 07:31:09 +0000

hey katz,i was wondering could u use this strategy with two languages at the same time?well not exactly the same but maybe one month japanese and another spanish?

By: K

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 17:36:31 +0000

Yes, I said it: “women and minorities”!

i dont understand this part O_o

By: Victor

Victor — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 10:32:36 +0000

Hey guys, I think this question has been asked before but anyway: do you think I could learn German and at the same time work on Heisig’s RTK?

By: Warll

Warll — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 19:12:38 +0000

I have actually not ran into any resistance, everyone who I have mentioned it to has been envious if not supportive. Although in truth I preemptively shoot down any resistance by dissing English’s lack of rules. Now if only I hadn’t fallen off the SRS band wagon I would be “done” kanji by now.

By: 2nihon

2nihon — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 06:02:50 +0000

I’ve already lost one family member, who’s written me off because I’m weird. Oh well, I’ll be weird in Japanese rather than bored and indifferent in English.

By: axxman

axxman — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 05:33:00 +0000

Tagaini Jisho is open source too so you can hack stuff onto it to make it work better for what you are doing too.

By: Slats

Slats — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 01:48:35 +0000

I found this quote the other day and thought this would be a good place to share it!

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act but a habit.”
- Aristotle

By: Brent

Brent — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 07:25:20 +0000

I guess someone didn’t pay attention to all the “reduce, reuse, recycle” propaganda being thrown at us in elementary school…

By: Jonathan

Jonathan — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 05:21:56 +0000

No prob. Just curious, was all

By: Ryan Layman

Ryan Layman — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 00:37:24 +0000

@Jonathan,

Not a huge deal. I just prefer new books and gladly would pay full price for a work I really like. I did use a bit of hyperbole in the capitalism thing, so I`m sorry if you took my comment at the wrong degree of seriousness that was required.

By: efeilliaid

efeilliaid — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 21:54:44 +0000

Hi,

try Tagaini Jisho http://www.tagaini.net and see if you like it. It has brilliant animations for 6000+ kanji. The stroke order is wrong in a few cases, but well…
It came with the following for your query:

今年 (ことし, こんねん)

By: Yaltafa

Yaltafa — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 18:40:15 +0000

Hi Kathz I have a question,

I am looking for a dictionary that give me the exact kanji pronunciation.

ｓｔｈ like that -> 今年　（こ・とし）

but I know only dictionary that gives the general pronunciation of the word. （ことし）。
(wakan, denshi jisho)。

If you can help me it would be nice. ( or anyone else that reads this).

By: efeilliaid

efeilliaid — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 13:21:47 +0000

Some time ago I gave up trying to change my environment. If I wanted to stay in the relationship with my girlfriend and keep my job which is the only way to fund my travelling to Japan, I had to let go. And you know what? That was the best thing I could do. I can now focus entirely on my girlfriend when she needs me, do my job faster (which at least allows me to do some reps at the office, when all vile tasks are completed) and devote the rest of my time – when I’m not disturbed – to learning Japanese using some wise bits from AJATT. It doesn’t have to be so hardcore for me, 18/24 hrs, listening to Japanese in the swimming pool or while letting the bombs away. No no. As these periods of learning occur repeatedly just like SRS reps, I don’t feel I’m losing anything and I even see that I acquire more than when I was obsessed with doing Japanese all the time, all the time and all the time. I’m relaxed now. I’ve been progressing at a satisfactory pace since I stopped pondering over the methods. I’m using SRS, native audio/video and textbooks, dictionaries and all that stuff. And yes, grammar too, because it never hurts. I completed 5 years of linguistic studies (English & theoretical linguistics, ha ha!) at a university and it never caused any damage. In fact, I’m quite puzzled when I read the advice not to memorize grammar rules. I never even suspected that anyone using grammar books would want to memorize the rules… During my English studies I never met anyone as dumb as to actually try and memorize them… Reading about grammar never hurts, people! It’s just a matter of choice and it won’t impede your progress. In my case, it facilitates my learning, because I don’t trust my inference too much. I don’t like to be lead by the hand but reading about grammar does help me.
Khatzumoto – thank you so much for this website, the SRS hints, bringing my attention to sentence picking and emphasizing the importance of native audio/video. And first of all – thanks for telling us all to learn the kanji first. I don’t know why I resisted so long, this really is the first thing to be done when starting Japanese.