All Japanese All The Time

I really have to plug the method of Comprehensible Input (CI) [0]. Specifically, Pablo Román's effort to make this viable for Spanish [1]. I started before there was a website or anything, just watching free youtube videos. Now I'm definitely B2 or C1. I subscribe partially just to show my support even though I mostly consume native-level media now. Similar and helpful along he lines of CI are [2] and [3]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Input_hypothesis [1] https://dreamingspanish.com [2] https://refold.la/ [3] https://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/

You may be interested in AJATT [0]. It recommends a method based on the Input Hypothesis by linguist Stephen Krashen, which basically says it's better to read and listen before writing and speaking, and that producing input too early can actually be harmful in the long run (picking up bad phonetic / structural habits). In other words, find media you enjoy in your target language (books movies series music YouTube etc) and spend as much time as possible consuming that media. The guy who wrote AJATT (All Japanese All The Time) had earphones playing Japanese audio 24 hours a day for almost 2 years. Along with learning the writing system, after 18 months of this method he aced a phone interview (got mistaken for a native speaker) and got a job at Sony. And he's pretty introverted / shy. Might be worth checking out! [0] http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/

Why do you feel that the SRS's utility is determined by whether the words are in context or not? In fact, the people over at AJATT[0] have recommended using sentences and never using individual words. You want to practice in the types of situations you're actually going to encounter the language in. And in almost all cases, you'll encounter Korean (and any other spoken language) in the form of whole sentences, or at least phrases. 0: http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/

The more you study the better you get so try http://alljapaneseallthetime.com There's some great posts about methods and motivation on that from someone who learnt Japanese in about 18 months.

1) There's a vibrant japanese learning community on the web that likes to talk about language learning in general; sites of note are http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/ and http://www.antimoon.com/ (about english learning). 2) Get a copy of Anki (http://ichi2.net/anki/) and load it up with the things you want to remember. If I were starting a new language, I'd do this with sentences from a textbook. As you get better, you can take sentences from things you're reading or from dictionaries, wikipedia, twitter (my favorite), or anything else. There are lots of theories on language learning, and it's hard to pin down what works. Some people thing the above suggestions are crazy and will tell you so, loudly. But you since you're doing things yourself, you can just try stuff. If you don't like something or if you don't think it's working for you, then change it. You might structure it something like Scrum: have a fixed study iteration that starts with a planning session and culminates with an assessment. The assessment could be a different depending on what you're studying; maybe a conversation with a native speaker on the subject of what you've been studying that week. Maybe a trial run of a standardized test you're studying for. Maybe watching the same TV show at 3 week intervals to see how much your comprehension improves. Depending on the result, then plan your text 2-3 weeks of study accordingly. For me at least, that seems like about as long as I can stick to…

at first, I focused on production of kanji from a keyword, e.g., discuss -> 談, at this point there is no Japanese and I spent four months getting through all the kanji. I still test daily and have gone through 21k kanji tests. Currently, I am reading みんなの日本語 wherein I am focusing on sentence mining and grammar. My current deck of sentences is around 800 sentences that I review as well, wherein I review recognition and speak out loud. My level is currently in between basic to low-intermediate. In the sentence mining I learn the readings of the kanji in context and could care less about kunyomi/onyomi, e.g.,幼稚園 -> ようちえん (or infancy-immature-park in RTK keywords). The method I am using is summarized at: http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com I don't follow it all, but some of it is good. I studied Japanese for 12 years half-assed never getting anywhere. For the first time I am making progress and I have a plan (which is the part that I lacked before). BTW, to retain vocabulary, I would recommend Anki http://ichi2.net/anki/ it is open and regularly updated.

first time I've heard about AJATT, here http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blog/about/overview-page/ it's description tells to not learn grammar, but I guess you didn't follow that rule? If so, why?

http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blog/ this site is incredible. The writing is super well done by a guy from Africa who moved to the US, and while in the US learned japanese. He learned how to speak so well that when he took an interview for a software development job, they asked him for his address (assuming he was japanese) and didn't believe that he wasn't from there. The site is not just for japanese. Most of the info is general (and uses either japanese or chinese as examples). I recommend it to everyone.

I'm not even sure living in the country helps that much on its own. The issue is that the vast majority of your language intake comes from your immediate surroundings - the media you consume, the friends you have, the books you read, the place you work, etc. I've seen a lot of language learners move to a country, take classes, but get stuck in an expat bubble. The worst part is, when you take classes, you're surrounding yourself with other non-natives. For most major languages, a heavy immersion is possible in your home country, especially with the amount of media that's now easily available. Heavy immersion is very effective, but it's also extremely difficult to pull off. The AJATT guy[1] was a big advocate for it and was extremely successful with it when it came to Japanese, but even he couldn't replicate it for Chinese from what I recall. If you're not going the heavy immersion route, I guess the best thing would be to just have fun with the language, pick up what you can, and accept that you'll never be great at it. [1] http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blog/

Very interesting. When I need to make myself work on something (which creates a new problem: deciding to force yourself to do something) I have 2 main techniques (I just realized you could probably do both methods together.) Method 1. Incrementing time boxes (the first step is similar to yours actually). Set a timer for 1 minute and do it for one minute. Then 2 minutes, then 3, and so on. (At some point you'll be working on it and forget about the timer, and that's ok.) (Credit to Mark Forster[1] and/or Khatzumoto[2] for that idea. [1] I believe it's in his "Get Everything Done" book as mentioned here http://markforster.squarespace.com/forum/post/2713432 [2] http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blog/timeboxing-trilogy-part-5-in… Method 2. Start with a blank piece of paper (or text file). Write down the goal. In outline form, indent and write the first thing needed to do that. If needed, indent again and write down the first thing to do that, and so on, until you have something to start on. Note that I'm not talking about outlining and planning the project, just the first step (of the first step, ...). A great benefit is it helps you focus on deciding where to start, breaks it down to something small enough to start on, and it keeps track of where you are in the process, what you're trying to do. I guess it helps with working memory (which helps with executive function). Proceed to work on the project indenting and un-indenting as…

I recommend creating your own cards, they just feel more weighty. I did jump start my sentence deck with the 500 card starter deck from AllJapaneseAllTheTime (http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blog/my-first-sentence-pack-is-he… Yet those cards feel different. If I were to redo things I would start from zero and build cards as you go. My process is to add 4 cards everyday. These sentences come from posts in my RSS feed. Over the years I found websites that interest me. Take for instance http://blog.esuteru.com/ which has a very 2ch style of news, not safe for work but often interesting. Or I'll stumble upon people's blogs. For example "KEN's": http://qoqpop.blog123.fc2.com/ He is a phone "otaku" who often travels to china and Mexico for business trips. I found his blog in a N900 related search. The open source community also has plenty of japanese bloggers. For instance http://d.hatena.ne.jp/naruoga/ is the blog of a Debian translator and a journalist who I found through the OpenPrinting working group.

Agreed; flashcards have worked quite well for me for learning lots of words. Also for me, vocabulary is normally the limiting factor, while Getting grammar an pronounciation up to a usable level is a lot easier. I guess that differs from individual to individual. Trying to work with flashcards without a context (Learn the 1000 nost common words!), however, doesn't work at all. The words need to belong in a context with which I'm familiar, such as a book, film, or recurring conversation topic. My attempt at vocabulary training (shameless plug, you call it): http://vocabulous.net. But that's pretty much only vocabulary, still on the drawing board on the rest of the components. That said, the most important thing for the next big thing in language learning is that it's fun. Very few users will stick with it on willpower alone. Good thougts on this is at http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com. If I ever get the idea to learn japanese I'd check his stuff out.

Figuring out how to encode various classes of data into images is one of the more challenging aspects of the method of loci. Also, memorizing an associative array of data is less natural in the method of loci than memorizing ordered data since the way you recall the data is by tracing your steps through the memory palace in your mind. I guess you could place two images at each location, functioning sort of like a LISP alist (list of pairs where the first element in each pair represents a key and the second a value), but that still doesn't answer your question about how to create the images. Maybe go syllable by syllable? For example, if you wanted to remember that kochen is kitchen, you could visualize a macaw perched on the shoulder of Barbie's boyfriend while the latter flipped burgers on a toy grill. The "caw" sound in my dialect of English is identical to the "ko" in kochen, and Barbie's boyfriend Ken would be enough to trigger my memory of "-chen", so I'd be like "Right! This was illustrating that the German word kochen means to cook." Spaced repetition lends itself a lot more naturally to memorizing foreign language vocabulary words than the method of loci, so you might want to use that approach instead. Within spaced repetition, you can also use vivid images as a sort of scaffolding to increase the odds you'll remember the word before the next review, and you can eventually let that image go once you start recalling it easily. The more connections you form to other…

The author wants to know why toddlers who are surrounded by a language and can never speak to anyone about anything as long as they live unless they learn it outperform high school students who don't need it to communicate with their friends and spend one class period learning about it (and that instruction not necessarily even given in the target language)? Well, I have a theory on that. Also, the previous post the author links to claims that it is remarkable that children learn language at a rate of 1 word every two hours? Seriously? I just learned a word of Greek in under two minutes. Kalimera! Really, Khatzumoto of All Japanese All The Time says it best: "It is a poisonous combination of ignorance, arrogance and innumeracy to expect to have even passable Japanese WITH AN ORDER OF MAGNITUDE LESS EFFORT than even a typical Japanese toddler has put in." http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blog/cute-girls-mathematics-langu…

It's really hard at times (I suffer the same thing), but the only thing you have to save yourself is your own will, so you have to learn to strengthen it somehow. Divide your day in small periods of time and set working goals for each of these. Let's say take 45 minutes to focus on work and finish some task. And then take 15 minutes to read feeds or social websites. And then back to focus on work. And so on. The smaller the goal the easier it is to achieve it and the less boring it seems compared to these juicy websites waiting for you. I recommend you read this on your first 15 min. break, it will help you to understand this method. It's a GTD thing: http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blog/how-to-accomplish-great-thin… I wrote that equation in a paper and have it right next to my screen at all times. That way I don't have the temptation to forget about it :) Good luck!

For first timers - Duolingo(don't do it for more than a few months) For beginners - https://www.languagetransfer.org/free-courses-1#french For all others, some sort of immersion approach is the only way if you don't live in the country. Figure out the general approach below and adapt for your target language. - AJATT http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blog/all-japanese-all-the-time-aj… - TMW https://learnjapanese.moe/ - Refold https://refold.la/

Without exception, Anki is the way to go. http://ankisrs.net/ I've found the philosophy extolled on these blocks to be especially conducive to the programmer mentality: http://alljapaneseallthetime.com/blog/ http://www.hackingchinese.com/

For people who don't know what timeboxing is: http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blog/timeboxing-trilogy-part-1-wh… Even if you aren't into language learning it is a very interesting (and practical) read. "Anyway, the short answer is this: timeboxing is a technique where we place deliberate, prior, artificial limits on the time to perform a given task. Within reason, the tighter (shorter) the time limits, the better."

From http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blog/about "In June 2004, at the ripe old age of 21, all post-pubescent and supposedly past my mental/linguistic prime, I started learning Japanese. By September 2005, I had learned enough to read technical material, conduct business correspondence and job interviews in Japanese. By the next month, I landed a job as a software engineer at a large Japanese company in Tokyo" Basically, his method involved constantly immersing himself in Japanese media.

From http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blog/you-dont-have-a-foreign-lang… “Do you know what it means to sinter something? I didn’t; but the kanji are so clear: 焼結 “burn + join”.” I could believe that because specialized vocabulary is transparently made of simple characters put together, there is much less of a jargon/terminology barrier, so those that become literate actually can read specialized language just fine. This is not true of English.