Remembering the JLPT2 Word List

During my last challenge I learned about 1,000 words from the JLPT2 word list. Over the last 29 days I managed to finish up the remaining 2,286 words on the JLPT2 word list.

Here are some statistics and graphs from Anki.

Recent Work
In last week 4237 reps/7 days
In last month 14265 reps/29 days

Average New Seen
In last week 586 (83.7/day)
In last month 2286 (76.2/day)

Total cards reviewed: 2,286
Total active cards: 1,968
Leech Rate (words I didn't remember): 14%

First Answered - This graph displays how many new cards I learned per day. I did 100 new cards on most days. There are a few days where I didn't have time for new cards so I only did review cards.

It's important to recognize when you need a break from new cards in any SRS system. A lot of people get carried away and do too many new cards without finishing their reviews. This is a trap I've fallen into a few times. As you can see I grew impatient at the end of the challenge and did 300 new cards on my last day.



Review Time and Reps - These graphs are pretty similar. One represents total time spent per day and the other total repetitions per day. Most days I spent around 45-60 minutes to complete reviews and new cards.





Cumulative Due - This graph represents how many review cards I have to do. If I do nothing for 30 days I will have 2,000 review cards waiting for me. Obviously not something I would do however you can see how SRS systems like Anki can be problematic when you miss a few days and have an endless pile of review cards. SRS works best when you can discipline yourself to do daily reviews. SRS reviews are the first thing I do when I wake up.



Due - The due graph represents the total number of reviews I have to do in the future. This number constantly changes as you review cards.



Conclusion

It feels good to be more or less done with the JLPT 2, 3, and 4 word lists. Although I do not have a 100% recall rate I don't think it's necessary. The remaining words will come to me through other important channels like reading and listening.

There are some 2,500 words remaining for me in the JLPT 1 word list. Although I feel confident that I could muscle my way through the list I'd like to take some time off. My new challenge should be posted in a few weeks. I'm thinking about doing an extensive reading campaign to try and reinforce all the new vocabulary I just learned.

Studying for the JLPT2

Why JLPT2?

I decided recently that one of my study goals is to pass the JLPT2 exam. Why not level 1? Well, my goal is really to have qualifications to do professional Japanese-English translations. I've hard that if you pass level 2 it's not too difficult to get translation work.

Practice Exam Results

This past weekend I decided to try my hand at some JLPT practice exams. I received a borderline passing score on the level 3 practice test. When I took the N2 practice exam I received a ~30% on the reading section and a 100% score on the listening section. The biggest difficulty with the N2 exam is the vocabulary and grammar.

Memorizing Words

I've decided to do to prepare for the N2 exam by memorizing more vocabulary words. Since I recently finished all of the Joyou Onyomi readings I think now is the perfect time.

During my previous challenge I managed to consume about 1,150 words from the level 1 list (19%) over 23 days. It was grueling to say the least and I was spending several hours a day going over reviews. I burned out and put the challenge on the shelf.

I've studied the JLPT2 list for about 10.65 hours over the last 2 weeks. I've memorized a total of 850 words in less than an hour per day. I'm really surprised and pleased by the results. I attribute this entirely to memorizing the Onyomi readings.

Current Goal

My current goal is to complete the JLPT2 word list over an unspecified period of time. I've been averaging about 61 words per day. Some days I do 100 new words and other days I might just do reviews with no new words. I'm not forcing myself to adhere to a daily goal this time. I estimate I'll complete the remaining 2,486 words over the coming months. Next year I'm going to own the JLPT2 test :)

Yakuza 4 - Amazon Review Translation

I translated this review today. For my next translation I think I'll choose a professional editorial from Famitsu or Kotaku.

龍が如くをやるためにPS3を買い。クリアした結果。本当にPS3を買って良かったです。

I bought a PS3 so that I could play Yakuza 4 (Like a Dragon). I played through the entire game. I'm really glad that I bought a PS3.

グラフィック、モーション、システム、基本的な物は3からほとんど変わっていませんが、自分はストーリーと桐生一馬やキャラが好きなので、その辺は気になりませんでした。

The graphics, animation, and game mechanics haven't really changed. Personally I liked the story and the character Kiryuu Kazuma (桐生一馬).
* I'm not sure what その辺は気になりませんでした means but I think it means this thing isn't very important. I couldn't find it in any of my grammar books.

シリーズ4作目なので新しい物を求めてる人にはマンネリ化かもしれませんが、今回は主人公が四人いて、その四人が繋がっていくストーリーに大いに楽しませてもらいました。

People looking for something new in the latest game of the series might be disappointed however this time there are 4 main characters. This was a lot of fun because all 4 characters are tied together in different ways.

四人とも格好よく、最後に四人揃うとこなんかは思わずニヤニヤしてしまいましたね。

The main characters are really cool and they all come together at the end. I finished the game with a big grin on my face.

ストーリーもコテコテと言ってしまえばコテコテですけど、それでも引き込まれる物語(まぁ好みの問題ですが)魅力的な登場人物。

You can say the story is over the top however the way it draws you in is amazing (if you like things like over the top storys).

毎シリーズクリアするたび次回作が待ちどうしいです。

Every time I finish a game in the series I look forward to the next one.

シリーズのどれかをやって面白いと思った人は是非買って欲しいですね。

If you enjoyed playing other games in the series you'll definitely want to buy this game.

That's all for now. I'm looking forward to having my translations reviewed for accuracy. Overall I think I've captured the spirit of the review.

Translating Japanese into English

I decided recently that one of the professions I'd like to pursue is translating Japanese into English. As part of my studies I think attempting to do simple translations will help me acquire new words and better understand sentence structure.

Periodically I will pick some Japanese text from the wild and attempt to translate it. For today I've chosen an Amazon review of the video game Red Dead Redemption. Here are the results to my first draft. I will have it reviewed by a Japanese friend and post corrections later this week.

You can view the original review here.

My goal in translating this review is to strike a balance between accuracy and literalism. I guess that's one of the difficulties in translation work but I know little of the subject. Anyway, here goes!

プレイし始めたばかりなので基本的な部分をレビューさせてもらいます。
Although I just started playing I'd like to do a basic review.
* This is a very humble sounding sentence. It literally says something like "please let me review the game for you" which sounds very strange in English.

まずグラフィックですが、オープンワールドのゲームとしては、かなり綺麗で作り込まれています。
First of all the graphics are really nice for an open-world game.

アサシンクリードほど緻密だとは感じませんでしたが、そのぶんかなりマップが広く、入れる建物も多くて、中までしっかり作り込まれています。
It doesn't feel as detailed as Assasin's Creed but the world map is pretty big. There are many buildings that you can enter and they are detailed inside as well.

遠景描写もかなり細かくハッキリ見えます。
The background environment is really detailed and clear.

GTA4で不満だったフレームレートも滑らかになっています。
I was disappointed by the frame rate in GTA4 but they smoothed it out in this game.

操作性もGTA4と比べるとストレスがなく、流行りの壁をよじ登るアクションがあるのも嬉しいです。
The controls are stress-free compared to GTA4. I'm also glad that they added the ability to climb over walls like many other new games.

牛や馬などの動物が見た目も動きもかなりリアルです。
The animation of animals like cows and horses is very realistic.

ただ序盤のミッションで小さくて可愛いウサギを狩らなくちゃいけないのは生理的にキツかったです。
Even the first mission of the game where you have to hunt cute little rabbit is psychologically intense.

Conclusion

Thanks for reading and if you can offer any comments or corrections it would be much appreciated.

Jouyou Onyomi Readings

Although I haven't posted for 2 months I've been very busy studying Japanese. Over the past 2 months I've managed to memorize the Onyomi reading for the 1,945 Jouyou Kanji. This is a standard list learned throughout grade-school by kids in Japan.

The Challenge

The challenge was to remember the reading (pronunciation) of the most commonly used Onyomi (Chinese Reading) for the 1,945 Kanji in the Jouyou list. I didn't begin this as a challenge and therefore didn't have a set goal of doing this is in a prescribed period of time. It was only after I made it about halfway through the list that I realized I was going to finish rather quickly. I owe it all to Anki flashcards and images as mnemonic devices.

How I Implemented Mnemonics

I did an analysis of Onyomi readings a few months ago where I discovered that there are a total of 348 unique sound patterns associated with the 2,500 most frequently printed Kanji in the Asahi Newspaper. With this in mind it was my goal was to choose a mnemonic image for each unique sound. By the time I finished learning the Jouyou set I created a collection of roughly 130 images. Each one represents a separate sound.

My goal was to remember the readings as quickly as possible. This is why I decided to use images instead of full text mnemonic devices like the ones used in Heisig. In some cases I have fuller mnemonics that associate a story or sentence with the Kanji and image. It's difficult to explain so here are a few examples.

Mnemonic Images

Reading: メツ or metsu

When I started this challenge I didn't initially try using images. This was the first mnemonic image I used when I started. I was struggling with remember a particular Kanji reading (滅) when it occurred to me that the reading sounded an awful lot like Mets. The character 滅 means destruction. I thought to myself "The Mets are destroyed by the Yankees." Sorry Mets fans but it's the first thing that popped into my head!

Here's what the card actually looks like (front and back) in Anki.

After I came up with this mnemonic I figured it might be helpful to stick an image of the Mets logo in the card. It looked nice just having an image without all the extra text for the mnemonic cluttering the flashcard. This is when I decided it might be worthwhile to simply associate an image with each reading and then just stick the image in the card. That's when I looked up the reading for "metsu" and laughed out loud when I realized there is only one character with that reading!

Luckily there are many sound patterns associated with at least 2 or more Kanji. Here are some examples that I came up with along the way that are higher frequency.

Reading: エン or en

For those of you unfamiliar with Japanese currency that is a 1 Yen coin. The word for Yen in Japanese is actually En.

Example: 垣 The meaning of this character is hedge/fence/wall. I don't use a text mnemonic for this character. I simply have an image of a wall of 1 Yen coins. The image popped into my head after I inserted the image into the flashcard. It wasn't so much a conscious decision. Ever since then the character was simple to remember.

Reading: モ、モウ or mo, mou

This is a picture of my friend Moh. I never told him that I was using him as a mnemonic to remember Kanji readings but I suspect he will be happy to have his likeness used in such a way. Moh is also a student of Japanese.

Example: 網 The meaning of this character is netting or network. The mnemonic for this character is "Moh is good at networking." It's true. Moh is good at speaking and networking with people! Thanks Moh!

Reading: フ、フウ　or fu, fuu

This one is pretty obvious. There are dozens of characters with this reading. If you need a text mnemonic device it's pretty easy to start it out with "I pity the fool that...". It's primitive and nerdy but it works.

Example: 浮 This character means float. When I learned the etymology and stroke-order for this character my mnemonic contained something about a rubber duck. I don't remember the full mnemonic anymore because I don't need it. However, this character started out as something like "Mr. T likes to play with a rubber duck in the bathtub." Try getting that image out of your head.

Reading: リュ、リュウ or ryu, ryuu

Ryu is a popular character from the Street Fighter series. I was never a huge fan but the character is iconic and Japanese.

Example: 流 This character means current or flow. My mnemonic is "Ryu is the current champion in SF4." The meaning of current in this case isn't the same but it doesn't matter. Remember that mnemonics are like training wheels. You don't need them for long so don't over think things.

Reading: ケン or ken

This is obviously Ken from Street Fighter.

Example: 拳 This character means fist. I don't have text for this (in fact none of my ken characters have text) but the connection is obvious. None of the other characters read ken really have a connection but it doesn't matter for the most part. The image of Ken from Street Fighter is stuck in my head.

Retrospect

In retrospect this is a very effective way to rote memorize the readings for almost 2,000 Kanji. My only regret is that I didn't do this last year immediately following my completion of James Heisig's Remembering the Kanji.

According to Anki it took me approximately 62.4 hours to complete this task. It's definitely higher than that if you account for the time I spent finding mnemonic images and the time I will spend doing reviews over the coming weeks but overall not a bad way to kill a few days.

Day 20 - 100%

Total challenge time: 14.71 hours.

2252 sentences
72% accuracy on first review
75.5% accuracy all time (2163 of 2866)
88.6% accuracy with young cards

Failed cards: 366
Cards waiting for review: 1250

I'm going to spend the next few weeks going through the failed and review cards at a casual pace. Hopefully later this week I can write up a review of the challenge.

Day 17 - 82%

My current project is winding down with only 400 new sentences to go. I should be done on Tuesday at which point I'll spend another week or so doing reviews and wrapping up the failed cards (currently at 231).

This has been a really good challenge so far. I think the challenge is good in length. I'll have finished all new sentences in 21 days. The rest of the cards (reviews and fails) will be complete about a week after that for a total of 30 days. My first card accuracy rate is still floating around 73% of 1855 sentences.

It's probably not too early to say that in retrospect the project has some flaws. For one I think 100 sentences is too many per day (Flashcards, not reading in general!). Furthermore, I think the content is too easy. I would prefer fewer, more challenging sentences. It's a very difficult balance to find. Try finding 10 sentences in your target language that you want to learn. It's time consuming. I think when I move onto the intermediate level sentences I'll either do about half as many cards per day or do less sentences in the challenge.

I'll write a thorough postmortem next week.

Day 15 - 73%

I have 597 new sentences left and 183 failed sentences. I've decided to leave failed sentences for the end. It's important to mention I haven't been doing review cards. There are currently 720 cards waiting for review. My plan is to clean up the review cards after I finish my first run through.

Here are some basic stats.

1652 completed sentences
73% accuracy on first review
77% accuracy all time
89% accuracy with young cards

I'm getting really bored with these sentences. They're a little too easy but mainly it's the limited vocabulary that bores me. The intermediate series sentences will be different, I hope.

Day 11 - 49% Complete

Today my failure rate was 36%. I think this is a good thing because it means I'm hitting new content.

I started watching some new anime series: Fairy Tail and The Twelve Kingdoms. I watch with subtitles on (at least once per episode) and I've noticed my comprehension is much higher than I expected it to be. I'm not sure if this is an effect of my recent studying or not since I don't typically watch anime. It must help though, even a little.

I'm looking forward to completing this challenge with only 12 days left. I think I might speed up and take on more than 100 new sentences per day so I can finish early. What I've noticed with learning sentences this way is that reviews are not as time sensitive as more difficult content such as Kanji stoke order or readings. After you've learned a sentence once you don't need to see it again right away assuming you know all of the words and are simply learning new verb conjugations or grammar. The goal isn't to memorize sentences but to read and understand them fluently (without thinking in English). It seems that over time you will start using the new patterns and conjugations naturally.

Day 9 Progress Report (40%)

I finished sentence 900 this morning. Here are some statistics from Anki.

Average time per answer: 15.5 seconds
Total review time: 6.2 hours
Correct young: 87.6%
Correct first time: 74.4%
Total correct: 79.4% (1145 of 1442)

The "correct first time" statistic is interesting because it represents success rate of the first exposure to a card. It's probably higher than it should be but I can think of a few reasons why that is. First of all this is the beginner series grammar book. Secondly, when I reach a new grammar point it is easily learned after the first exposure. This means that subsequent cards (new facts) containing the same grammar point are usually easily read and passed on the first exposure. This might change once I hit more difficult grammar patterns in the intermediate and advanced books.

Reading Speed

In addition to doing my sentence repetitions in Anki I've been reading some Manga and Amazon game reviews for fun. I've noticed that my reading speed has increased quite a bit. Perhaps my ability to deal with unknown words has improved as well.

Overall I have to say I'm really happy with the sentence input method that I learned about through AJATT (All Japanese All The Time) over a year ago. This is my first sustained effort at doing sentence repetitions and I'm finding it extremely useful.

Only 1,352 sentences left in the A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar.

Day 7 Progress Report (31%)

I just finished sentence number 700 of 2252 (31%) of the A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar.  Today was probably the most interesting day so far because I had a failure rate of 27%.  This is opposed to about 4% on day 1.  Failure rate basically means that I didn't completely understand the sentence the first time I read it.  After 1 or 2 reviews the sentence was learned.  It's boring to read simple text which is why graduating from textbook sentences to literature can be so painstakingly difficult.  That is of course my goal.

Only 16 more days and I can get ready to tackle the intermediate level book in the series.  I've already been reading the intermediate level on the side and the sentences are definitely more interesting.  A lot of the basic grammar is built-in to the intermediate sentences.  I've been waiting a long time to be able to read Japanese at this level.  It's really a joy to sit down and read   It will be a long time before I can really enjoy a Japanese novel but at least the way is clear to me now.

How much reading and listening does it take to achieve fluency?

How much input do you need to speak English fluently? - This is an interesting article over at Antimoon that talks about one mans journey to fluency in English.  He estimates that he's read about 333k sentences in 3 years.  It looks like a lot but it is a very achievable goal at less than 9 pages of text per day.

My 100 sentences per day challenge can only take me so far.  86 days to be precise.  Of the 3 volumes in the Dictionary of Japanese Grammar series there are a total of 8,555 sentences.  I will consider the 8,555th sentence my graduation into real Japanese, and I'm looking forward to it.

Compound Verbs in Japanese

It's been said (who knows where) that Japanese is 80% verb conjugation. In fact verbs are often entire grammatical sentences on their own. It can be difficult to get used to but it's actually a pretty cool feature of the language and makes your life easier later on. Take this sentence for instance.

Japanese: スコットがあまり失礼なことを言うのでサリーは怒って帰ってしまった。

Literally: Scott (subject marker) very rude thing (direct object verb marker) say because, sally (topic marker) angry and returned and finished/ended up.

Translation: Since Scott was very rude, Sally got mad and went home.

The sentence looks really complicated if you don't know much about Japanese grammar but let's take a quick look at the compound verb at the end. 怒って帰ってしまった。 There are 3 verbs in here. Okoru (to get angry), kaeru (to return), and shimau (to finish, close, complete). Shimau looks a little strange but it basically implies regret in this sentence. It wasn't a desirable thing for Sally to get upset and leave. You could leave the shimau verb off at the end. I'm not an expert but I believe that would imply that either you don't care that Sally left or that it was a desired result.

To chain them all together you basically put the first two verbs into "te" form. Te form is used to connect verbs into a compound. The final form of shiamu determines the tense of the entire sentence. In Japanese the final verb always determines tense. Since this is a past tense sentence it's conjugated into ta form. We end up with okotte-kaette-shimatta which is pronounced "oko * tay-ka-eh * te-she-ma * ta". The asterisk just means you make a slight pause. It's hard to explain but it's really simple when you hear it. Also, the asterisk is not a standard notation in textbooks I just made it up because it's easy to understand.

As you can see compound verbs in Japanese are pretty simple compared to the same expression in English.

Day 3 - Beginner Sentences Challenge

I just finished day 3 of my new 30 day challenge.  It feels a lot less painful than my previous 120 day challenge (which I put on hold).  At day 3 I'm already 10% of the way through the challenge as opposed to 2.5% if it were a 120 day challenge.  The other big difference is that I'm reading beginner sentences and I already know most of the words and Kanji readings.

My process for doing sentence reading recognition cards is simple.  The front of the card is in Japanese, full Kanji with no Furigana readings.  The back of the card is in Japanese with Furigana readings and an English translation.  I begin by reading the card out loud so that I can practice pronunciation.  Then I flip the card to verify that my reading and understanding of the sentence was correct.  At the rate of 100 new cards per day I've noticed that my mouth starts to get pretty tired after about 50 sentences.  I've never been a big talker so I suppose I just need to keep exercising my jaw muscles.

My goal is to finish all 2,252 sentences in 30 days.  The pacing for this is about 75 cards per day.  I've been doing 100 per day because they've been really easy so far.  If I keep up this pace I will finish the new cards in about 21 days.  If I do end up finishing early I'll spend the last week doing review cards.

Learning New Words in Context

Out of the 300 cards that I've completed I estimate that I only encountered about 5 new words.  When I tried doing sentence flashcards last year I gave up very quickly.  I found it too difficult to learn new words in the context of a sentence.  This is especially true when trying to learn not only word meaning but Kanji readings as well.  I prefer to memorize words in isolation before learning how to use them in context.  No doubt there are people that disagree with this approach but I think it depends on the person and their pre-existing knowledge in the language.  Learning words in context can work but I think most of the time it's too slow.

Unplanned Hiatus

After an unscheduled 1 month break from studying Japanese I'm back!  I went through a month where I didn't feel like doing any studying and so I didn't.  The hiatus was triggered by boredom and other personal reasons but it gave me time to do other productive things like actually speak Japanese!

I discovered a few things during my break.

• I'm more proficient in Japanese conversation and have plenty of confidence speaking with strangers.  I can spend all day in Japanese and although I can't express everything that I want I could survive without ever using English again
• There are still a number of words and verb conjugations to learn
• My meta-skills have improved but if I intentionally work on them now I'll be far more comfortable using a limited vocabulary
• There are a number of sentence structures I need to learn for more natural conversation

I'm very happy with my progress and I feel that my study methods have been validated over the past month.  I've gotten to a true intermediate level without stepping inside a classroom or spending much time speaking.  It's been 95% input using flashcards, TV, and iPod up to this point.

Instead of going back into the vocabulary flashcards where I left off I'm going to start a new challenge.  I have a flashcard deck with 2,252 sentences from the book A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar.  I'm going to try and finish this deck in the next 30 days at the rate of 75 sentences per day.  It shouldn't be too difficult because I'm already familiar with this book and I probably have most if not all of the vocabulary that it uses already.  After this challenge I have another 3,157 sentences from the Intermediate book from the same publisher.  That might be my next challenge.

Time to get started!  I'll be maintaining my Kanji (production and reading recognition) decks during this challenge as well.  I don't want them to degrade any further following the extended break.

Onyomi Reading Analysis

I conducted a quick analysis of Kanji Onyomi readings.  First I wanted to know was how many unique sounds or readings there are and how frequently they occur.

	9056 Kanji in the WWWJDIC Kanji Dictionary	2500 Most Frequent Kanji in the Asahi Newspaper
1 or more Kanji	421	348
2+ Kanji	328	273
5+ Kanji	266	181
10+ Kanji	208	112

According to my results there are 421 unique Kanji Onyomi readings.  If you narrow down the 9056 Kanji that are listed in the WWJDIC Kanji Dictionary file to the 2500 most frequently printed Kanji in the Asahi Newspaper the number drops to 348.  Furthermore, if you focus on the readings for which there are 5 or more Kanji that use that Onyomi reading the number drops to 181.

What I've realized in my studies is that it is sometimes difficult to learn a new reading.  That is to say that until you've learned one or more Kanji that use a particular reading it can be difficult to learn.  I think that this is again related to the theory of association value.  The more characters you know with a particular reading the easier it becomes to learn a new character with the same reading.

Next I wanted to know which readings appear most frequently.  Here are the top Onyomi readings by frequency.

9056 Kanji in the WWWJDIC Kanji Dictionary		2500 Most Frequent Kanji in the Asahi Newspaper
Onyomi	Frequency	Onyomi	Frequency
コウ	292	コウ	106
ショウ	236	ショウ	97
ソウ	175	シ	70
シ	165	ソウ	64
カン	163	トウ	58
トウ	162	キ	57
キ	148	カン	55
セン	147	キョウ	55
キョウ	137	チョウ	48
ケン	122	カ	47

The tables are pretty similar.  Readings that are common in the large set of Kanji are also common in the most frequently used newspaper Kanji.  It's interesting to note that the readings for the 4 most frequent readings kou, shou, so, sou, all sound very similar to an English speaker.  I think this is just one of the many reasons why it takes Westerners a long time to master listening skills.  It must take hundreds and possibly thousands of hours of listening to develop deep Japanese listening ability.

97 bottles of beer on the wall

Today is day 23 of my challenge marking word 1150 and just over 19% complete.  My actual word count minus leeches (words I couldn't learn this time around) is 2577 or 32% of the complete JLPT vocabulary list.  I'm very satisfied with my progress after about 16 months of Japanese study.  I don't mean to sound like a braggart because I believe that this is simply evidence of the number of hours I've studied and not some silly metric of intelligence.  I truly hope my progress reports encourage other people to study language as well.

I have a lot of ideas for new posts but I've been completely engrossed by the challenge.  This weekend should allow me the time to write about something other than progress reports.  My last post was on an interesting topic but I lost steam at the end and feel like I failed to make a solid argument.  I'm looking forward to trying again.

This weeks calculations are about Kanji readings.  The question I asked myself was how many new Kanji readings do I need to learn at different intervals of my challenge.  Basically I looked at where I currently stand with readings and the number of readings I'll have entering the JLPT 2 list.

Until this year there were 4 levels in the JLPT test.  There are now 5 levels.  The changes are mainly to more evenly distribute the difficulty curve because there were many complaints about the gap between levels 3 and 2.  Personally I don't think there's much use in having an official test easier than the level 2 exam.  It won't help you get a job nor will it get you into any Japanese Universities.  I won't digress any further into the structure or utility value of the exam except to say that I'm using a list published from a few years back.

When I restarted my computer I forgot to save the stats I calculated so here are the estimates from memory.  There are roughly 2,000 Kanji in the complete list of JLPT vocabulary words.  When I started my challenge I had learned all 1406 words on the level 3 and 4 exams plus a few hundred words from levels 1 and 2.  I never calculated my number of known readings before the challenge.  According to my analysis of the level 3, 4, and partial level 1 list that I've completed I can now read somewhere around 1,300 characters.  This leaves me with around 700 new readings in order to complete my challenge.  I'm currently 52% of the way through the level 1 word list.  In order to complete the remaining 48% I will learn about 350 new readings.  Once I've completed the level 1 list the final leg of my challenge is to tackle the level 2 list.  The reason for completing the level 1 list first was pretty arbitrary.  It's supposed to be more difficult although I'm not sure if that's true or not.

The JLPT 2 list contains 3690 words.  I've calculated that in order to complete this list I will only have to learn an additional 350 Kanji readings.  I felt very relieved when I derived this number.  I'm rapidly approaching the point of diminishing returns on Kanji readings!  I figure that once I've reached 3,000 readings I'll be able to read 99% of printed material and 100% of newspaper articles.  If you guessed that my primary objective with Japanese is to read fluently then you guessed correctly.  I can't wait to sit down and read a newspaper!

Remembering Nonsense Syllables

The Psychology of Forgetting

Hermann Ebbinghaus is a famous 20th century psychologist best known for his discovery of the forgetting curve and the spacing effect in learning.  Modern day flashcard systems known as SRS (spaced-repetition systems) can thank Ebbinghaus for these discoveries.  The underlying spacing algorithms are based on his research findings.  Without SRS flashcard systems I fear I wouldn't have developed such a fondness of the Japanese writing system.

Ebbinghaus conducted a number of experiments where he memorized lists of nonsense syllables.  Nonsense syllables are syllables that have little association with English.  For example the syllable PED would not be considered nonsense because of its association with real words like pedantic and pedal.  Syllables such as DAX are be considered to be nonsense because they have little to no association with real English words.

This research would help Ebbinghaus establish his theory of the forgetting curve.  Those familiar with SRS flashcard systems are already well acquainted with the theory.  Time is relative to forgetting.  The longer we remember something, the longer it takes to forget.  No memory is permanent.  Given a long enough period of time anything is forgettable including your mother tongue.

Organic Association Value

I suggest you read the Wikipedia article on association value instead of reading my poorly regurgitated synopsis.

Association value is a theory in cognitive psychology that supposedly allows us to remember things more easily if we can associate them with something else that we already know.  This is what causes us to learn and acquire foreign language vocabularies at different rates.  The less association value a word has the more abstract it becomes making it more difficult to learn.

Examples of this in language are numerous.  I once read that there are more than 6,000 nouns that are nearly identical in English and Spanish.  In other words the association value is high.  These word-pairs are much more easily acquired when one of the words is already known.  As language families become more distant so do association values.  Japanese for instance borrowed the majority of it's modern lexicon from Chinese along with a good portion of the writing system.  Although the languages are quite different phonetically and morphologically, the distance in writing and vocabulary is much less than in other language families.  The association value is higher across language.

Creating Association Value

It's my belief that if we want to learn a foreign language that is very different from our mother tongue like Japanese that we can speed up the process by creating association value.  Abstractions can be bridged and association value created if we use our creative thinking ability.  Ideas, concepts, and words that are abstract to us can be made less abstract.  The speed of learning increased.

I've published several instances over the past few weeks of how I use mnemonics to create association value.  Here I'll break down the process.

Take the word 産婦人科 (サンフジンカ or san-fu-jin-ka) which means maternity and gynecology department.  If I tried to learn this word last year I would have quit studying Japanese.  The truth now is that the word is quite simple to read and learn.

Here are the Kanji definitions.

産 サン products/childbirth

婦 フ lady

人 ジン person

科 カ department

Given the meanings of individual Kanji the word is simple and logical.  If you know the sounds for each Kanji you have no trouble reading the word.  The problem is that learning the meaning, writing, and phonology for these characters requires a lot of elbow-grease and a different strategy altogether.  The characters have no association value so you have to create it.  Only after you create enough association value is this word easily learned (semantics and phonology for each character).  Thanks to Ebbingaus there's no reason to memorize nonsense.  Break down the language into discrete parts and create your own association value.

Day 18 - Progress Report (900 words, 15% complete)

It's been several days since I started memorizing Kanji readings before learning my daily word list.  I've found this strategy to be a immensely easier than before.  The numbers below show my daily card progress.

Day 18 new word statistics

1:42 50
1:52 32
2:00 21
2:05 8
2:09 3

As you can see I remembered 94% of the word list by the 5th review.  The final 3 cards may or may not be remembered by tonight.  I'm not really concerned.  Today was my most successful day so far.  I attribute this to learning the 46 new card readings in advance.

I've been recording the number of new Kanji readings that I've deliberately learned preceding the learning of new words.  The number of new readings should drop over time making the learning of new words even easier. Although I estimate that I can read over 1,000 Kanji, I currently have 382 cards in my onyomi reading deck.

New Kanji Readings (382 total)
2/7 - 46
2/6 - 17
2/5 - 38
2/4 - 48

Ideally new readings should be learned the day before the words that use them.  However I've been doing them about an hour to several hours before learning words.  It seems to be working.  If I have the time I will try to increase my number of new readings per day.

What does success look like?

I define success as a daily perseverance towards a goal.  My goal for today is to memorize 50 new Japanese words and maintain my growing vocabulary (current est. 2,373 words and 1k+ Kanji readings).

I'm wearing an eye-patch today because there's something wrong with my eyes.  I occasionally get severe headaches.  Although I can't attribute it entirely to EJS (extreme Japanese studying) it does seem somewhat related to extensive monitor viewing.  Maybe my right eye compensates for the left.  Either way, the patch is helping.

What does success look like?  Well, I consider myself a success today and here's what I look like.  Eye-patch, black beanie, headset, and a pretty serious facial expression.

I will not fail today.  I will persevere.  What does your success look like?

Day 13 (10.83% complete)

Until today I've been learning new Kanji readings from words themselves.  The process works but it's still very difficult and time consuming.  I've decided to augment my approach so that the acquisition of new words goes a little more smoothly.

I have a new deck of Kanji onyomi readings.  These are onyomi recognition cards only.  My new strategy is to add new cards to this deck as I learn new words.  The day before I learn a new set of words I'll add any new Kanji to this deck and study the readings.  This will give me some exposure to the reading before I get to the new words in the vocabulary deck.  It seems obvious that if you know the meaning of the Kanji and the readings that learning the definitions is like the final step.

Today was my first day trying this approach.  It was time consuming to manually create nearly 50 new onyomi reading cards but I think it was worth it.  This morning I memorized the new onyomi readings before proceeding onto the vocabulary deck.  Although I used to be generally opposed to the idea of memorizing readings I think this is a fantastic way to prepare for the brute-force method I'm employing for learning a massive word list.

There is a great side-effect to this approach.  Learning readings is generally pretty easy.  I attribute the relative ease to my prior completion of Heisig's Remembering the Kanji book.  When I'm through with my challenge I will have failed/suspended a large number of word cards.  However, I will have the ability to read almost all of them during my next run.  When I go through the list of remaining words at the end of my challenge I predict that they will be easily acquired.

That's all for now.  I've got to get to calligraphy class!

Tying your shoelaces

Two weeks before I moved from San Francisco to Japan I decided to challenge myself.  I was going to walk 20 miles per day for 10 days.  The distance from my apartment across the Golden Gate Bridge and back was roughly 20 miles.  The challenge was to do this for 10 days.  It would end up costing almost 5 hours per day but my iPod was speaking Japanese, my running shoes were equipped, and the sandwiches and Cliff Bars were all packed.  I was ready for my challenge!

When I started walking I never imagined that it would become a physical challenge.  I'm no athlete but I'm in really good condition for a guy that spends most of his life sitting.  My intuition was that distance walking was relatively easy and that 5 consecutive hours of it everyday would simply be a psychological challenge.  If I quit it would be from boredom and not from the physical stress.

As it turns out walking 5 hours by yourself is boring.  Luckily I had the Golden Gate Bridge to keep me company.  If you've ever visited or lived in San Francisco you're probably familiar with the strange weather patterns.  One minute it can be sunny and hot.  The next minute it can be cold, rainy, and cloudy.  The quickly shifting weather patterns and fog rolling in and out of the bay made for some breathtaking views that helped pass the time.  It was an experience that makes me happy when I think about it.  Every day was unique.  It feels strange for me to say now but there was something spiritual about it.

By the 6th day I could barely walk.  Wearing a brand new knee and ankle brace I limped to the bus stop to meet a friend for brunch.  I'm fortunate that he convinced me that it would be foolish to continue my challenge.  I'm a pretty stubborn guy but he asserted that I risked permanent injury and I believed him.  After all, I tied my shoelaces too tight causing the tendons in my ankle to become inflamed.

My ankle was full of fluid and I could hear it creak every time I moved it.  The change was so gradual over the course of 100 miles that I hardly noticed until it was too late.  The soreness I experienced after walking felt natural to me at the time.  I can sleep it off, I thought.  It's probably just muscle soreness.  It took over a month for my ankle to completely heal and I enjoyed my last week in San Francisco with a limp.

Sometimes I can only see the big picture.  The details of a journey are simply variables for a future postmortem analysis.  It's important to monitor the details, especially when we're tired and everything seems to be going according to plan.  The warning signs of a problem can be so subtle that our intuition tells us to ignore it.  I think it's true in many aspects of our lives: health, business, relationships, and even language learning.  Everything we experience gives us subtle cues about the condition of our future.  My older sister taught me how to tie my shoelaces over 20 years ago.  As I discovered, tying your shoelaces for 20 years doesn't always make you an expert shoelacer.

I feel very nostalgic about the week I walked across the Golden Gate Bridge.  I look forward to doing it again one day.  Next time I'll check my laces.

Homophones and the Death Star

I read a post on Victory Manual today that talks about the use of mnemonics for remembering words.  Alex brings up the words 衛星 and 衛生 which mean satellite and hygiene respectively.  Both words are pronounced エイセイ.  Coincidentally I learned the word for satelite just yesterday.

Here's the mnemonic I used.

Word: 衛星
Kanji Meaning: defense + star
Mnemonic: Death Star

When I saw that the Kanji for defense and star were used the image of the Death Star from the movie Star Wars popped into my head immediately.  There's no getting rid of it now.  The cool thing about mnemonics is that they work so well sometimes that you don't even get a choice in their design.  It's automatic.

At the time I didn't know that there was a homophone for エイセイ that meant hygiene.  As soon as I read this I updated my mnemonic to include Darth Vader washing his hands.  Lexicon +1.

While I was typing the word エイセイ into this post I realized that there are actually three other homophones.  Here they are.

永世 eternity; perpetuity; immortality; permanence
永生 eternal life; immortality
永逝 death; dying

Death Star.  It was purely coincidental but now I can add the meanings immortality and death to my mnemonic.  Every now and then it's nice to learn 5 words for the price of 1!

Day 11 - Happy Birthday to me, Japanese simplicity, and Ateji

Technically my birthday was yesterday in Japan but it's still January 31 in California for another hour or so and I like to stretch out my birthday as long as possible.  Happy 28th to me.

I recently finished up my word list for day 11.  I struggled badly yesterday and today due to a birthday hangover but I'm happy to report that I'm still on track.  The challenge must go on!

Here are some new observations I made today.

Sometimes really "difficult words" are easier in Japanese.  Today I learned a word that I did not know in English.

English: Otolaryngology
Japanese: 耳鼻科
Kanji Meaning:  ear + nose + department
Meaning: Also known as ENT (ear, nose, throat), ENT is a branch of medicine that focuses on none other than ears, noses, and throats.

The Japanese word is so logical that if you came across it in context it wouldn't be terribly difficult to discern the meaning by analyzing the Kanji etymology.  I had no idea what the English word meant and I'm still not sure I could produce or pronounce it easily.  The Japanese pronunciation is quite simple: ジビカ or "gee-bee-ka".  Pretty nice!  Recently I learned several medical related words and they were very easy to understand.  I imagine that Japanese physicians would have a pretty difficult time learning the English equivalents.

False Cognate or Ateji?
Today I learned the word for can.  It's 缶 and it's pronounced カン or "con".  According to Jim Breen's WWJDIC dictionary this is what's called an 当て字 or Ateji character.  Ateji is basically when a character is used to represent a foreign word because it has a similar sound.  The meaning of the character itself is usually different.  I'm wondering if this is actually a false cognate.  I used an online translation site to check the Chinese equivalent.  I used English and Japanese as the source language.  There is indeed a Chinese character (simplified and traditional) that is very similar and used for the word can.  I wonder if this character is the Chinese equivalent of Ateji?  I'll have to ask the next time I speak to a Chinese friend.

Progress Report - Day 9

I'm now 7.5% of the way through my challenge and I feel unstoppable!  I made it through the first 450 words with a cold and a migraine and I feel really good about persevering.  Today was the easiest day of the challenge so far.  Here are a few statistics and mnemonics from day 9.

Review Statistics

General

• New leeches: 5
• Daily leech rate: 6%
• Cumulative leech rate: 17%
• Total words: 450
• Percentage of challenge complete: 7.5%
• Percentage of JLPT1 word list complete: 33%

New Cards (time, failed card queue)

• 11:08 53
• 11:20 44
• 11:36 21
• 11:46 11
• 11:53 5 (91%)
• 12:00 3

As you can see today was a very good day.  I remembered 91% of new cards by the 5th review.  There were only 3 new leeches.  That's a 6% leech rate today versus a 34% leech rate yesterday.

New Mnemonics

Word: 裸足
Definition: barefoot
Mnemonic: naked + foot.  hada means skin.  think of a barefoot woman.  hada, she.

Word: 視点
Definition: opinion, point of view, visual point
Mnemonic: inspection/vision + point

Word: 覆す
Definition: to overturn, to upset, to overthrow
Mnemonic: 覆 means overturn or capsize.  in the wild west when a wagon would capsize it took a lot of work to restore it.  think of all the guys shoes standing in the hot desert sand trying to overturn a wagon.  i call them kutsu-gae's.  (kutsu means shoe)

The last example is pretty strange.  It's actually based on the mnemonic I used to remember the writing of the Kanji which I borrowed from someone at the Reviewing the Kanji website (which I highly recommend).  If you take a look at the Kanji it's composed of two other Kanji.  On the top is "West" and the bottom is "restore".  You can see how the story evolves from here.


This is not the first time I've included or modified old mnemonics used for remembering Kanji stroke order.  In my opinion this is a huge advantage to Japanese language learners and further proof that the Heisig method is effective.

That's all for now.  I'm looking forward to tomorrows word list.  Only 5,680 words to go!

Progress Report - Day 8

I just finished my 50 words for the day and I thought it would be a good time to share some statistics. I've been keeping track of the number of repetitions required to remember a word for the first time. I also keep track of the number of leeches and will report some basic numbers here as well.

Here's a look at how I recorded my new card repetitions on day 3.

1/23
7:24 59
7:36 51
7:47 33
7:53 22
7:58 15
8:02 12
8:04 7

The left column is time and the right column is the number of failed cards left for review. When I add new cards I set Anki to "show failed cards at end." I then go through my new set of 50 words to get an overview. As you can see there are more than 50 cards starting. This is because I had some failed cards leftover from a previous session. In the future I'll try to have a clear queue when I start a new session.

By the 5th review I have successfully answered 75% of the cards. When I took a look at the first week data this number was pretty indicative of the week as a whole. 76% of new cards are remembered (answered correctly the first time) by the 5th review. Six reviews and up appear to be represent the point of diminishing returns.

Here's an overview of what I've discovered so far.

• 76% of new words are remembered after 5 reviews or less
• 15-18% of new words will not be remembered (i.e. they will eventually fail enough times to be flagged as leeches)
  
• Day 7 - 15% of all new cards were suspended (cumulatively)
• Day 8 - 18% of all new cards were suspended (cumulatively)

Today was the most difficult list of new words I've encountered. I think that explains the large increase in number of suspended cards. I define most difficult quantitatively (see the numbers above) and qualitatively. It felt like there were many unknown Kanji readings during this session.

I plan on augmenting my strategy as of today. When learning new cards I will manually suspend any cards that have not been remembered by the 6th review. The reason is that these words have a high probability of becoming leeches and will most likely be a waste of time. It will be easier to learn these words after the 120 day challenge. This is inline with my original intention of remembering a minimum of 33% of the word list. If I maintain this pace and leech rate I should be able to claim around 4920 words.

I also hypothesize that the suspension rate will decrease over time. There are two reasons for this. As I progress I continue to learn new Kanji readings and bolster known or partially-known readings. This will improve the retention rate of new words. Secondly, I've been going through the word list backwards. That is to say that I've been learning the JLPT1 word list first which statistically contains more of the less frequently used Kanji than the JLPT2 list (I've already finished levels 3-4).

That's all for now. I plan on updating these numbers at least once per week. If you can think of any interesting statistics you'd like to see please leave a comment.

Using the Kanji

Alex at Victory Manual wrote a nice post about how the Kanji are the layman's best friend. I couldn't agree more. I want to write a quick note about how the Kanji work and how they can actually be very useful to a language learner with a few observations from day 8 of my 6k challenge.

Kanji are ideographic or logographic depending on your school of thought. Either way the Kanji have intrinsic meaning and phonetic sounds. Depending on whether the word is Japanese or Chinese in origin the sound is usually different. This sounds confusing but once you get a little experience and build up some vocabulary it can be quite helpful. Here are two ways that I use the Kanji to remember words.

Meaning of the Kanji

All of the Kanji have meaning. Sometimes they have multiple or abstract meanings but anyway you look at them, they have meaning.

Vocabulary words that consist of multiple Kanji are usually borrowed from Chinese. Fortunately the compounds are usually quite logical. When you evaluate the meaning of the Kanji in a compound it usually tells a story (or you can make one up!). This story can be used to learn and remember vocabulary words.

Here are a few concrete examples from the 50 words I learned yesterday!

Word: 議題
Definition: topic of discussion, agenda
Compound: 議題 = debate/deliberation + topic/title

Pretty easy right? Debate plus topic simply means "topic of discussion". Not every word is this logical but thousands of them are. Here are a few more examples.

Word: 貧弱
Definition: poor, meager, insubstantial
Compound: 貧弱 = poor + weak

Word: 護衛
Definition: guard, convoy, escort
Compound: 護衛 = safeguard + self-defense

Mnemonic Devices

Sometimes the words can be supplemented with a mnemonic device or a story that helps you remember the meaning of the word. Here are a few of the stories I created yesterday that helped me remember.

Word: 負う - to bear, to owe
Compound: 負 sometimes means wooden box carried with supplies for a pilgrimage
Reading/Pronunciation: オウ (sounds like owe)
Mnemonic: I don't owe you anything.

This type of mnemonic is rare but it's really nice when it happens. It's called a false cognate. Sam Alexander / Glowing Face Man wrote about this recently. Basically it's when two words in different languages have similar sound and meaning. It's usually pure coincidence but it's really useful for a language learner.

Word: 護衛 - guard, convoy, escort
Compound: 護衛 = safeguard + self-defense
Reading: ゴエイ (sounds like go-aye)
Mnemonic: guards tell you to go away

Word: 貧弱 - poor, meager, insubstantial
Compound: 貧弱 = poor + weak
Reading: ヒンジャク (sounds like he-n-jack-u)
Mnemonic: he and jack are both poor

I like to use peoples names in my mnemonics whenever I can. Another example of name usage is the word meaning "exception/exclusion". 除外 is pronounced ジョガイ (sounds like joe-guy) and my mnemonic is "everyone is invited except for Joe and Guy because you guys suck." It might sound like a strange way to remember words but it works for me!

Do you use mnemonics to remember words? What are some examples?

マイ First Update

This is my first update after my initial challenge announcement. The reason for this is that I've actually been very ill this week. I started out with a mere cold last Friday which peaked over the weekend and then transitioned into a full-blown migraine headache partially incapacitating me. I am happy to report that I have hit my target of 50 words per day up until this point. Hitting this target while struggling physically with the migraine has given me hope that I will make it through the 120 day challenge!

Now, the update.

Here's a screen capture I took of my Anki stats using the handy Windows 7 snipping tool. It's a nice feature but I'm going to search for an Anki plug-in that does this automatically later.



As you can see I started my 120 challenge with a lot more than 50 words. The reason for this was that I had a long list of Katakana words (usually words borrowed from English) that I wanted to get out of the way. Katakana or typically Waseiego (和製英語) words are learned very easily compared to native Japanese words or borrowed Chinese words. It's similar to learning a noun in a romance language like Spanish or French that shares similar shape and sound to the English equivalent. The "actual" 120 day challenge starts just after this huge spike of activity.

After 7 days most of the words are sticking. I've had a relatively low failure rate for cards. I attribute this to my prior knowledge of Kanji etymology (i.e. the Heisig Kanji method) and readings (i.e. 1,800 prior vocabulary words).

It seems that when I encounter a new Kanji compound the meaning is easily learned when I have at least partial knowledge of a Kanji reading. The words that don't stick easily typically have multiple Kanji where I have little knowledge of the reading. I define partial knowledge of a reading quite simply. When you can read a Kanji compound or word but you can't necessarily recall the readings in isolation. When all readings are known in isolation the meaning is easily acquired. Contrary to how I used to feel about Japanese vocabulary acquisition, it seems that Japanese words might be easier to memorize through rote than non-ideographic languages.

When I first starting learning the Kanji I thought the rote process of memorizing Kanji readings was a waste of time. My opinion has changed. I'm currently working on another deck of Onyomi recognition readings. I'll probably write about this in more detail later.

6,000 Word Challenge

I officially started my 6,000 word challenge 4 days ago. I thought it would be a good idea to keep a diary documenting my progress. I'm also hoping this prevents me from quitting prematurely.

What is the 6,000 word challenge? First I'll give a quick overview of my Japanese studies. I starting studying Japanese around October, 2008. My first step was to complete "Remembering the Kanji" by James Heisig. Using the freeware flashcard program Anki I completed the task in about 4 months. I subsequently took a trip to Japan in March, 2009. I struggled during this trip to balance learning the language, having fun, and maintaining my knowledge of the Kanji. I might write more about this particular struggle in a different post.

Living in Osaka for 3 months taught me a few things. It was incredibly frustrating not being able to speak the language. I realized that learning the etymology of 2,000 Kanji was just the tip of the iceberg. I also realized that if I wanted to actually achieve native level fluency that I would need to move to Japan and learn at least 10,000 words. This number is somewhat arbitrary but I think 10,000 is a good number.

In October, 2009 I relocated to Osaka, Japan and began walking down the long road of vocabulary acquisition. At this point in my studies I my personal lexicon was around 1,200 words. As of about a week ago my vocabulary hovered at around 1,800.

My goal for this year is to finish the 8,000 or so words in the infamous JLPT (Japanese Language Proficiency Test) using Anki and a little bit of brute force. The 6,000 word challenge is going to test my endurance and sanity over the next 120 days (50 words per day).

I'm currently on day 5 of the challenge. You may be questioning both my honesty and my sanity at this point. 50 words per day in my opinion is not possible (for me). The sheer number of review cards that build at this rate would force me to do an unthinkable number of daily reviews. My strategy is to set the leech failure threshold in Anki to 10 initially. What this means is that any card failed 10 times will be suspended. I'm hoping this will allow me to keep pace. If I start falling behind I will adjust the failure threshold so that I can continue.

Can I really learn 6,000 words in 120 days? Of course not but I will learn a lot of words and a lot of Kanji readings along the way.

Steve Kaufmann talks about "letting the words overflow" in this video which I recommend anyone studying a language to watch. I really like his theory that if you let the words overflow they will start to sink in. I also believe in the power of SRS (spaced-repetition systems). I think that my current strategy will allow me to pick the long hanging fruit. If I can retain 1/3 of the words in Anki by the end of my experiment then I think I've succeeded in merging these two learning theories and I will be more than happy. Not only will I have learned 2,000 new words (~16.67 per day) but I will have many new Kanji readings and at least partial knowledge of the other 4,000 words. I believe that I can retain more than 1/3 of these words over 120 days.

Here goes! I'll be posting about my progress every few days. I hope to include some stats and graphs from Anki periodically as well.