Japanese Study: Day 7
I did several big things today, the first was to translate a clients email, take action and respond in Japanese. It's just a small thing, but a big improvement from what I did last year.
The second big thing was I also wrote this post in Japanese. Eventually I will be able to properly translate it, but for now I just described the photos as best I can. My wife helped me improve some parts and any new vocab has been added to my study list. Check out the Japanese article here: 日本語の勉強:七日目. In future you can see if a post is translated in the top right grey bar under the post title.
I've cut back on the amount of distractions in the morning by using Greasemonkey and this script from Lifehacker. It blocks me visiting certain sites until the evening. I've also stopped opening email until study is done, as well as turning off any IM and twitter clients.
Reading through comments today I came across some good advice from JoeInJapan on my previous post about replacing English with Japanese:
Every minute spent in English puts you one minute further away from actually attaining fluency in Japanese.
"Japanese For Everyone" was recommended to me by Danny. So I decided I will work my way through this book first.
Most of the conversational situations are incredibly dull, so I may try some things to spice up the content.
I finally got my vocab into smart.fm and onto my iphone!
Come join me and study the same vocab if you wish, but I recommend starting your own list: Nihongo Notes: Master Japanese Vocab
I'm going to try and speed things up a bit now that I'm settled on using smart.fm and which book to study. Things went slowly the last week, but that's understandable since I need to get into a routine and build up my vocab list.
Trying to lose the weight gained over the Christmas holidays, so just soup and vegetables tonight!
My parents-in-law bought me my second だるま "Daruma" doll today. Last year my wife bought me one on New Year's Day and it's now a tradition for me.
When you get a だるま you make a wish and color in the right eye. I have no idea if it's the dolls right or the one on my right, either way I'm not bothered ^^ When your wish comes true you color in the other eye.
Apparently blue だるま are for personal success and achievement. So last year my wish was to find employment in Japan. That wish came true, so I painted the other eye of my first だるま!
My wish for this year is to improve my Japanese to the point where I can hold small conversations with my parents-in-law and even business clients. I want to feel at the end of the year that I've studied the best I can, so if I don't study enough I can't fill in the other eye!
Maybe I will get a bigger daruma each year until it gets too big to move ^^
- 書く (かく) "to write"
- 使う (つかう) "to use"
- 勉強 (べんきょう) "study"
- 僕 (ぼく) "I; me; (male)"
- がんばります "I'll do my best"
- 日本語 (にほんご) "Japanese language"
- ようこそ "welcome!; nice to see you!;"
- お疲れ様 (おつかれさま) "much appreciated; good work; that's enough for today;"
- すみません "sorry; excuse me; thank you; (polite)"
- すいません "sorry; excuse me; thank you; (casual)"
- 今 (いま) "now; the present time; just now; soon; immediately;"
- お願いします (おねがいします) "please"
- 夕飯 (ゆうはん) "evening meal"
- 食べました (たべました) "ate"
- 野菜 (やさい) "vegetable"
- 蛸 (たこ) "octopus" - Thanks for pointing it out CLF
http://www.ryusworld.com
I mentioned a website in my blog earlier on which I think is really helpful for beginners.
The website ist this one: http://www.hiragana.jp/
You copy the link of a japanese website in there and the software adds furigana to the Kanji. Doesn't work with images of course and flash is also a no go iirc.
http://www.goddesscarlie.com
I used this textbook and I really recommend it! It can seem to move a bit quickly at the start, but once you work out that they actually give you all the information you need very succinctly plus there are lots of example sentences that build on previously learned things. I really liked this one!