Comments on: Why You Should Keep Listening Even If You Don’t Understand

By: the relationship between language and music I « thousand mile journey

the relationship between language and music I « thousand mile journey — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 00:39:28 +0000

[...] learning? I think that the quote at the top says it all. When I was starting out on Cantonese, I listened to as much audio possible to get a feel for the rhythm and flow of the language (I still do, whenever I get the chance). [...]

By: Vaan

Vaan — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 02:52:02 +0000

This whole ‘listening’ thing doesn’t work for me; I’ve been listened to Japanese for a long time (I LOVE their J-Rock/J-Pop music, likes Miyavi, and anime and etc-not that it matters) But I haven’t learnt very much at all for all the time I’ve put into it! A few things yes, but ONLY a couple random tidbits…! D:
(and I don’t have the patience to read ALL of what you have said; i would go insane and act like a wild animal, or skimming brief sections, not absorbing anything as I have a very short attention span when it comes to reading/studying… and wow this is a long bracket lol)
People keep telling me; “Read this book! It’ll help you!” BUT I CAN’T!! Ack!
So i’v listen for almost a year to all my favorite bands and watched some of my favorite animes-done what readings I could-but NOT ENOUGH HAPPENS in return for all those hours!! Even if I have subs on or a great book!
T^T
Is there any other way to ‘abrrob’ the language without reading all the time, if listening isn’t doing much for me? Or is there something I could be doing to MAKE it work? D;
agh-help?

By: Ian

Ian — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 04:12:46 +0000

Have you read the book called “Language Logic” by Robyn Matthews? She uses a term called “motherese” to refer to the easy bits of language that are fed to you as an infant and a child –> during your “incubation” period.

By: All Japanese All The Time Dot Com: How to learn Japanese. On your own, having fun and to fluency. » Comfort Zone, Growth Zone, Panic Zone

Sat, 24 Oct 2009 14:50:47 +0000

[...] do eventually put in enough time, but it’s dissipated over far too many years to reach “critical mass“. All human skill is depends on memory in some form. Think of this memory as, to mix [...]

By: hanikas

hanikas — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 17:15:09 +0000

I know it’s such an odd time to state a comment (it’s been months!) but heck, here’s my two cents!

Firstly, I agree. Truly, utterly, wholly with Khatzu (omg i had to scroll to see how to spell that *fail* i wont attempt to pronounce. is it かっづ？！)
Anyway, I, myself have proven (so to speak XD) that it works! Even before I read this blog entry, or even KNEW about the existence of this website, I’ve already been doing this listening business for 2-3 years. And I’m telling you. It works like magic.

@ mallory : It doesn’t matter I guess, BUT it would definitely help and be much better if you’re actually interested in what you’re listening to!

Okay, based on my experience, I began by basically listening to Japanese songs. Not any song, but those that I really liked – alot. For example, and I don’t know if anyone knows him, Daite Senorita by Yamashita Tomohisa (of NEWS) was really addictive and so was the whole Arashi, News, Kanjani 8 bunch of tunes. (Yeah I [used to be---still am and MORE] a Johnnys fan : anyone familiar with them, in the context of Japanese culture anyway.) I digress.
So, I began to feel frustrated after a while. I loved a tune of a particular song but the meaning of it escaped me. And being into music lyrics alot previously, I just had to know what the words meant. And so as the law of cumulative causation would explain, one thing led to another – I bought myself a ***-Eng dictionary and every single word I heard that was repeated I’d look up.

The first step to learning a language in my opinion is, VOCABULARY.
This is because, when you start to recognize words, as you listen to more stuff, you’ll automatically focus on the words whose meanings elude you and build up your vocab bank even further and well, after that, it’s just a matter of identifying the sentence structures yada-yada and all the other nitty gritty details right?

So, yeah, that’s what I think! Listening is akin to immersing oneself in the culture so to speak. Even when watching a drama/movie; sure watch it with subtitles, but make sure the native language is turned on! (I ABSOLUTELY ABHOR DUBBED STUFF. YUCK. personal opinion. objections to be taken outsideee) If you are a drama otaku – or addict – like me, your brain will end up getting used to multitasking between reading&comprehensing the subs and listening to the native language. With the vocabulary you have (see prev para) you’ll eventually build up even MORE vocab and start to recognize sentences, patterns etc.

That’s what happened to me anyway.
And (even though my Japanese is still pretty low level due to lack of practice and the fact that I JUST CANT DO KANJI!? ALKDJFLA) the same effects happen when I watch Korean dramas too. Mind you, I don’t watch taht many Korean dramas, I can probably count all in two hands, but zomg each drama is LIGHTYEARS long, so I pick up enough XD okay digressed again.

SO I HOPE IT WILL HAPPEN TO YA’LL TOO.

thank you for this post that helped to enlighten the science behind what had been going on with me for the past few years. haha (:

By: Scott

Scott — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 12:21:45 +0000

Got to say thanks to you.

I’ve recently -the past week – decided to learn Spanish and your blog has been some interesting reading. I’ve got to say that I agree with what your saying.

I’ve changed my music over and am watching some Spanish TV each day.
As I’m just starting out I understand hardly any of it but its a awesome feeling when you catch words and phrases you know.

Cheers Man.

By: Ceryni

Ceryni — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 03:49:27 +0000

Hey, I guess its a little late to comment on this post but I figured this one would be the most fitting. I found this part of an article written by someone called 呐喊.
初学者最头痛的就是发音。29个字母要发得地地道道，标标准准对国人们绝不是一朝一夕就可以练出来的。想把语音发地地道最好的方法就是一个字—— 听。听广播！！！！！你说什么？你听不懂？我也听不懂啊。没有人一开始就听得懂的。那不是天才是什么？！听广播的好处除了能纠正自己的发音外，日后自己的口语的语速，语调会慢慢地潜移默化地走向完美。当然，没有听个天花乱醉是做不到的。
I decided to start laddering from Chinese into Spanish when I found this. loosely translated its “The biggest from for starting students is pronunciation…the most important method to learn this is just one little word ‘listen’. Listen to broadcasts!!!! What did you say? You can’t understand them? Me neither Ah. Nobody understands at the beggining…”
Anyway I figure you get the drift. It just struck me as funny when I read this and reminded me of Khatz’s sense of humor

By: Mallory

Mallory — Sat, 09 May 2009 03:19:26 +0000

*bump*
Does anyone respond to this anymore?

“In fact, I find that, after listening to Japanese for the past few months, and hardly anything else, I feel that English feels odd. And, I think that’s due to the fact that my brain is changing with what it hears most of the time. And that’s Japanese.”

ditto! I was wondering if anyone felt the same.
Hey, I have a question. Does it matter WHAT you listen to, as long as it’s in Japanese?

By: Yume

Yume — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 03:46:57 +0000

I absolutely agree with you! Listening Listening Listening! I’m currently learning Japanese and I’m not taking a class! I just listen to a lot of J-pop music and learn some of the structures using online material (it also helps with the writing). However I absolutely believe that I’d be nowhere in Japanese right now if I hadn’t started by listening to the music and speech. It is a valuable tool that most people overlook, and it also helps connect the meaning of the words directly to the brain as well as arranging the words in the correct order according to patterns picked up from listening. When learning a first language as a baby, most people are exposed to their native language for a year or more before they start learning to speak and understand it! The same is theoretically true with a second language!

This article is useful and inspiring to those who wish to learn another language, no matter what language that may be!

P.S. i’m starting a new site (currently only ipod touch/iphone compatible and under construction) called http://www.itouch2learn.webs.com to help people who wish to learn the Japanese Language! Please check it out!

By: sirdanilot

sirdanilot — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 14:58:18 +0000

I’ve read most articles on this site but this is the first time I post a comment.

When I listen to Japanese, I’m usually doing something else and that’s always in English (for example right now I am listening to a podcast and typing this). I really don’t know squat Japanese, I could probably sum up my entire vocabulary right here.
Most of the time, I am not even listening to the podcast (or sometimes japanese music), it just plays in the background. The only things I recognize are endings like ‘desu’ ‘janai’ and maybe something like ‘amerika’ or ‘tokyo’ or ‘nihon’ (the reason I recognize those endings is because I experimented with different methods before this, and those involved grammar).

I haven’t experienced yet that I recognize a certain word that is continuously repeated through this podcast. Do I just need to listen more, or do I need to learn some base vocabulary first? I’m currently at about 400 kanji, haven’t done sentences yet, I know most of the kana.

Summary: Japanese sounds like gibberish to me. Do I need to play it in the background?

By: Sarah Nguyen

Sarah Nguyen — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 07:46:54 +0000

Your blog looks absolutely amazing, thank you for putting so much work into it! Um, I’ve yet to read a blog post, but first impressions at least look great. ;]

By: Kia

Kia — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 15:02:24 +0000

sorry, bad link before.

http://enterzon.com/

By: Kia

Kia — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 15:01:56 +0000

Off topic. But here is a site that has a game that helps you learn mandarin. I am signing up for it now. It was mentiones on the omniglot blog, so it’s worth taking a look,

http://www.enterzon.com

By: Amelia

Amelia — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 00:41:36 +0000

@Poke-Baki

It’s just exposure. After a while, you know it. If you keep up your kanji SRSs (every day), then after a while you will find they look familiar and will jump out at you on the page when you’re reading them.

I think it’s easier for us Chinese-learners, because we see the characters so often they get engrained in our minds much quicker. But the SRS will do this for you, too, so no worries. Just keep on SRSing and keep on reading, and it will all click soon.

By: QuackingShoe

QuackingShoe — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 23:54:38 +0000

You don’t need a tablet or anything, you can just use a mouse. There should be a hand-writing input method in any IME. It’s by far the fastest way to look up a kanji. Doing radical searches and the like are far too time consuming. As long as you know the stroke order, you can look anything up in a few seconds.

By: Solar Wind

Solar Wind — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 19:00:50 +0000

Ayo, I think it encompasses both types of listening, passive and active. For the last few months I’ve been passively listening to anime while I’m at work and I can see it working, and quite well at that. Whenever I read a manga most of the words I come across that I don’t know feel like old-friends even though I don’t know what they mean. Often this means that I only ever have to look up the word once and it’s instantly mine.

Poke-Baki, if you have a wacom tablet or equivelent you can set up any Mac or Windows machine to recognize hand-drawn input. Both iPhones and iTouches support this as well (and they have a decent Japanese dictionary you can download from the iStore). As a last resort there is a wordfile on this site somewhere with all 2042 kanji + keywords + stories. If you know the keyword of the kanji you can look it up by Ctrl+F searching the document.

Regards

By: Japanse tv series « Jan & Peggy’s Weblog

Japanse tv series « Jan & Peggy’s Weblog — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 08:01:54 +0000

[...] het studeren bent door ernaar te luisteren, shows te bekijken… Khatzumoto heeft er een mooie blog post over [...]

By: Poke-Baki

Poke-Baki — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 07:43:23 +0000

Great topic! Man we need a forum for this descussion, cus most of the surious discussions get lost as a comment.

Anyway, after RTK and picking up all the input, I’ve hit a wall with Kanji. How do you learn how to read the kanji? Without asking a person, in a book, no furigana? It’s difficult.

Only way I’ve been dealing with it is hoping it pops up in a manga that I’m reading with furigana

By: きのこ

きのこ — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 21:06:13 +0000

Try a trick I used long long ago on videos. It’s easy with DVDs. With downloaded videos you’ll need to download twice, subbed version and unsubbed version. First watch the video with subtitles in English so you understand what the video is about. Then immediately delete the subs/turn that option off, and watch it forevermore in Japanese only. Maybe I’m the only one, but I picked up a lot more when I knew what the conversation was about than when I was going in blind.

By: Ayo

Ayo — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 17:28:52 +0000

When you say listening – do you mean full on 100% all the time? Because it’s really hard work listening to it with all my attention and not understanding anything.