A short review of Japanese From Zero 1 + 2

October 12th, 2010, 11:26 | 4 comments

Yesterday I finished book 2 of Japanese From Zero, which is my main means of learning Japanese. I thought it would be a good time for a short evaluation.

Japanese has three ways of writing: The syllabaries hiragana and katakana (together called kana), and ideographs from Chinese characters, kalled kanji. In Japanese From Zero 1, you learn hiragana. Level 2 teaches katakana, and at level 3 they start teaching kanji, which I really look forward to.

In short, I liked this with Japanese From Zero:

You really learn Japanese from zero – no prior knowledge at all required. And yet you learn how to read and write Japanese. Some other books either anticipate you already know the syllabaries, or focus only on talking. Japanese From Zero was just the level I wanted.
All lessons have the same structure: They begin with new grammar and vocabulary, in the middle the new kana is introduced, and in the end you practice your new knowledge in a set of grammar and vocabulary drills. This is as close you can come to a classroom lesson, and I liked that.
The grammar is pedagogically explained – it’s easy to understand.
The “progressive” method (see below) of learning kana apparently works.
The books are pretty “nice” in style; personal rather than dry.

And disliked this:

Since I’ve studied languages at university level, I prefer a more academic approach. Japanese From Zero is not totally layman, but it’s somewhere in between. (The authors are an American interpreter and his Japanese wife, without degrees I suppose, or else they would probably mention them.) Most people would probably appreciate this, but I can’t help thinking: What is it that you don’t tell me because you think I can’t take it?
The strange vocabulary selection. In one of the first chapters we learned words like “body fluid” and “high blood pressure”. (Words that I have, as opposed to “dog”, “meal”, “storm” etc, now forgotten.) There is also an American bias; you learn how to write Los Angeles, San Francisco, Las Vegas, Thanksgiving, Halloween, and so on, in katakana. Good for Americans…
The typos. One typo in a language learning book is one too many. But these books are full of them – as confirmed by my Japanese tutor, and also as pointed out by many Amazon reviewers. That’s a real scar and makes me think of the Japanese From Zero series as an unpolished diamond. It could have been so good, but the typos are a serious nag. The authors should really take a day or two per book to give them a real proofreading!

The “progressive” method of learning kana means this: You learn a set of syllables in each chapter. Once you’ve learned them, those syllables will be written in kana instead of with roman letters. I was irritated by this method at first, because I learned all hiragana in the first days through a training site. Despite this, I think it’s a good idea to learn the syllabaries peu à peu like that. It makes the characters stick, and you learn to draw them the right way. It also made me want to finish these books quickly, since I was eager to read the Japanese without the annoying roman letters, which really look ugly in the middle of a kana word.

Yes, it’s hard to get some flow when reading kana. It’s tempting to read the words in rōmaji (as it’s called when roman letters are used), because it’s so much easier. But the way I see it, you must force yourself to read all Japanese in kana as soon as possible. Only that way will those characters become more natural to you. I think I’m well on my way. I’ve already developed a kind of rōmaji aversion, meaning it’s irritating to repeat older chapters in the books, where the kana is mixed up with rōmaji.

The books are thick (about 300 pages each), square and printed, probably digitally, on very white paper. I think that format works great. And I just love it when it’s time to order the next level book – I like sticking to one series.

Japanese From Zero is a part of YesJapan.com, a pay site with lots of Japanese learning videos, games, as well as the book lessons. I haven’t tried it. I’ve bought the first three books for about 20 euro each in less than 2 months, and I must admit it almost feels a bit strange not to gain access to the site after such a loyal spending spree. Each book could for example come with one month’s free membership. (The first book took me 3 weeks, the second 4.)

Anyway, there are lots of free and smart p2p resources for language learning out there. I will come back to them in a later post.

I didn’t do much research before I ordered Japanese From Zero. I chose it because of its title – my Japanese knowledge really was zero – and the fact that it was a series with which I could continue after I had left zero.

On that subject: It’s always tempting to do lots of research when you learn a language (or anything else), but those who spend hours finding the right means of learning have missed an important fact: It’s not the means that is most important. It’s you. And your devotion. So I try to keep away from the web searching for different strategies to learn Japanese, and just focus on my book. It’s the hours you spend with it that matter, not which book you use.

Category: English, Japan
Tags: Japanese, Japanese From Zero, language learning, learning Japanese

One month of Japanese studies

September 18th, 2010, 18:44 | 4 comments

Today I have studied Japanese for exactly one month. My pace has slowed down a bit since I came back from Prague, where I had all the time in the world. At home, there’s always lots of stuff to do. But I do try to study every day. I’ve just begun chapter 4 in book 2 of Japanese From Zero.

I’m very fascinated by the Japanese society, and especially how they differ between fantasies and reality. I find that modern and intelligent. I put it like this in an editorial called “Reclaim your fantasy” in Destroyer 05:

Japan has the weirdest fantasies of all societies – tons of brutal hentai where small girls are raped and sometimes killed. Just like me, the Japanese like it when we go to extremes. But Japan also has the lowest crime rate of all societies. People there can apparently tell fantasy apart from reality. We should become better at that in the West too, both for our own personal wellbeing and for the sake of society.

I’m trying not to idealize Japan too much; I’m sure there are problems there too, and they do have the death penalty. But a little idealization is always good for language studies. Eller hur, Josh?

Category: English, Japan
Tags: Japan, Japanese, language learning

7 Japanese lessons in 7 days

August 26th, 2010, 23:23 | 1 comment

The printing has been delayed until Tuesday, so I have loads of time on my hands. I use it to learn Japanese from this book:

I find it pretty good. It seemed to be too simple in the beginning, but the slow tempo makes for a more thorough learning. And when you’re learning from a book, you are the one that sets the pace. So far, I’ve devoured 7 chapters in as many days. (Got the book last Friday.) And I tell you, each chapter is several hours of concentration, memorizing and all the stuff that language studies is.

I love it! Haven’t learned a language from scratch for a very long time. Here’s my language studies history:

Age 0: Swedish. (Hey, I was great at it!)
Age 9: English in school (mandatory).
Age 12: German in school (choice; French was the other available language).
Age 21: Czech at university.
Age 28: Hungarian at a private school in Budapest.
Age 35: Japanese by private tutor.

When studying Hungarian I realised that once you’ve learned a language at university level, you can’t go back. I don’t want to look at funny cats or draw lines between fancy illustrations – just give me the complete grammar tables, please!

So I never really learned much Hungarian in the end. A Spanish course I took with a friend had the same problem; a tempo so slow it makes you lose interest. But what can you expect from a course with one lesson a week.

I like the cats (ねこ) in Japanese from Zero though. I gotta be patient with this language. I feel a bit like the Karate Kid – learning lots of meaningless phrases, that hopefully one day will make perfect sense. And I know that will be beautiful.

Learning a language is like going to a gym. You won’t see results immediately. But they’ll come. And they’ll reflect the time and energy you devoted to your training. Just like with your body, you gotta rest for a day inbetween sometimes, to let the new muscles/brain cells grow in you. But right now I’m a linguistic bodybuilder. I want results and I want them now!

And I got the first results some day ago. When I posted this piece of (modified) shota a while ago, the Japanese was just a bunch of exotic signs to me. Seeing the picture again, I realized I could read the text! Not understand it, because I still haven’t learned the words that the signs make up. But I could read out loud all the hiragana parts of the text.

Another result today: I saw a Japanese restaurant called Midori (みどり), and I knew it meant green. That was fun!

In another post I’ll tell you why I decided to learn Japanese.

(Oh, and I tried the street tutor thing again today, but with no luck – he was Korean.)

Category: English, Personal
Tags: Japanese

A little holiday

August 23rd, 2010, 23:43 | 11 comments

I went to Prague last Friday. I stay at a couple of friends’ apartment. They are away the whole week and it’s my duty to water the plants and feed René, their intersexual African snail. I don’t have a very good record of keeping plants alive. Never tried the snail thing, so hold your thumbs for me will you.

I’m here to supervise the printing of my next project. No secret what it is, but also no need to get into the details right now – that’s another post. I visited the printing plant today to give them a colour sample for the cover and just to say hello. Turns out they will start printing my thing on Thursday the earliest, or maybe even early next week.

So in the meantime, I’m simply on vacation.

Yesterday, I followed my friend J, his boyfriend M and their friend R to Kutná Hora, where we saw the bone chapel and St Barbara’s cathedral. R is a 23-year-old construction worker, but he also makes a living as a prostitute. The main purpose of the trip was to visit his girlfriend and his two kids. We had so fun that in the end, they decided to join us back to Prague.

The bone chapel in Kutná Hora, Czech republic.

The Czech beer is more wonderful than I ever remembered. Fresh, tickling! It’s not that strong either – you can drink it instead of water. I mean that! Pivo is so integrated in the Czech culture that even 4-year-old kids know how to order it (at least R’s kids). And what other country would have a children’s animated series where a dog goes to buy beer and drinks it? This episode of Maxipes Fik (Fik is a giant dog that can talk) is very entertaining (the beer part starts at 3:00, but the whole episode is lovely):

I started learning Japanese last Wednesday. I have a private tutor in Berlin – my friend W joined in on the first lesson which almost cut the price in half (15 euro per hour for the both of us) – I hope he’ll continue. While in Prague, I rely on a book. I’m so glad I got it before I left Berlin, since my stay here will be prolonged and I will have lots of time on my hands. With languages, as with all kinds of learning, you’ve got to act while the iron is hot. There’s no better learning tool than passion, and right now I possess it.

The day before yesterday I even found myself a tutor on the street. I walked up to a guy who looked Japanese and asked him if he wanted to help me with my studies. He turned out to be a lone 19-year-old traveller from Tokyo who would continue to Budapest the same evening. So I bought him dinner in exchange for his services as my substitute せんせい (sensei). Before we parted he invited me to come visit him in Tokyo. You bet I will – just don’t know when.

Yeah, the energy never dies.

Something sad happened this morning. I live in the suburbs, they look very “Eastern” from a “Western” perspective. (I don’t like this mental division of Europe, but you all know what I mean.) Think huge complexes of high-rise buildings at the end of the subway lines. But they’re not that bad actually, and many of the houses are being renovated and painted in brown and orange colours that actually look quite good against the lush surroundings. My friends chose to live here because they like the outdoors.

Anyway, there was a police car at one of these houses and a blanket covering a body. My first instinct was to take up my camera. How tragic isn’t that. My next instinct was, thank god, not to. I asked a young woman with a baby what had happened. “Some guy jumped from the 17th floor,” she replied. How unfathomably tragic. I’ve never been so close to someone ending his life like that.

At the moment I’m reading André Gide’s L’Immoraliste (in Swedish). For the first time. I’m half through it and I love every single sentence.

What’s more to say? I saw two men holding hands downtown today, and two lesbians who didn’t hold hands but had crewcuts and were dressed in the same kind of camouflage clothes, so I’d say that equals holding hands. The Czech republic is openminded and I think there’s a correlation with the fact that they are least apt to attend services in Europe – see this chart.

I wrote this post at The Globe, a café I used to hang out at back in 1997. It has moved since then though, and despite its fabby space it’s just a remnant of its cosy past. And the internet was so slow I had to wait till I got home to post. Therefore I can also report that the cikadas are singing in the suburb.

Category: Personal
Tags: Japanese, Prague

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