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.
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Thursday, January 28, 2010
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 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!
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%
- 11:08 53
- 11:20 44
- 11:36 21
- 11:46 11
- 11:53 5 (91%)
- 12:00 3
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
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.
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.
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)
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.
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
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?
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?
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
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.
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.
Sunday, January 24, 2010
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.
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.
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