Linguistic Relativity

The principle of linguistic relativity holds that the structure of a language affects the ways in which its respective speakers conceptualize their world, i.e. their world view, or otherwise influences their cognitive processes. Popularly known as the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis, or Whorfianism, the principle is often defined to include two versions. The strong version says that language determines thought, and that linguistic categories limit and determine cognitive categories, while the weak version says only that linguistic categories and usage influence thought and certain kinds of non-linguistic behaviour.

Tae Kim over at guidetojapanese.org has some interesting things to say about learning kanji.  It’s well worth reading the whole post, if not his entire blog.  Here is what he says about memorizing on and kun readings for every kanji

To put it bluntly, learning all the readings of a Kanji is a complete waste of time. Yes, as a general rule of thumb, Kanji compounds use the on-reading while single characters use the kun-reading. However, this rule is nowhere consistent enough to make it more than a good guess (this is particularly true for 大 which we can’t seem to decide to read as おお or だい).

In addition, many Kanji have multiple readings kun or on-readings such as 怪力(かいりき or かいりょく?), 外道(げどう or がいどう?), or 家路(いえじ、うちじ、やじ?). Even if you guessed the correct reading, it might be voiced or shortened such as 活発 and 発展. Also, Kanji such as 生 have so many readings, it’s completely pointless to memorize them because you won’t know which one will be used in a word such as 芝生、生ビール、生粋、and 生涯. Not to mention the various words that only use the Kanji for the meaning while completely ignoring the reading. These words such as 仲人、素人、and お土産 are literally impossible to guess the readings for. At the end of the day, if you see a new word, you always want to look up the reading to make sure you learn the correct combination. In addition, the readings will be easier to remember in context of real words that you can actually use. Essentially, memorizing the readings by themselves is a complete waste of time.

His suggestion (as mine) is to learn kanji meanings, stroke order and to learn lots and lots of vocabulary.

Someone posted a slice of life podcast called Anytime Andante of what seems like a teenage girl talking about nail polish and similar teen girl things.  What makes it interesting is that there are transcripts in Japanese and English.  That combined with the short short sentences and basic grammar might make it a good jumping off point to native materials.

One thing I’ve been planning on doing is familiarize myself with a lot of Japanese Idioms.  I’ll probably make an anki deck at some point.  But for now, the Japanese Idiom Dictionary is a pretty good resource.

It’s 2:30am and I should be sleeping but I’m going to write my goals for the next few months. I just realized that it’s about time to start writing in Japanese. Maybe not today or tomorrow, but soon I will start writing a journal in Japanese. Probably just a sentence or two per day at first, but hopefully more later. After that I will probably make an italki account to get someone to write to.

I’ve started adding tae Kim grammar cards to the mix. Added 150 last week so that does it for basic grammar. I rescheduled them between 1 and 15 days so they don’t bog me down but I still see them fairly often. On the grammar cards I’m really trying to be strict with the the grading because the cards are pretty literal translations. I’ll review those for a week or so and then probably start adding essential grammar cards.

I’m still adding core sentences too. I thought I only had 500 more left to catch up, it’s more like 1000. This should keep me busy for a while.

The obvious change from last report are all those sentences.  I think it’s over 500 new sentences in the last month or so.  I’ve given up adding any cards other than sentence cards until sentences catch up with vocabulary.  Since I know the vocabulary in the sentences I’m making short work of them.  About 800 of the vocabulary are not from core, but from another deck, I am really only at about 1500 core vocabulary.  So that looks like I have about 500 more sentences until I’m caught up.

I’ve noticed that I can do dictionary lookups within anki(I think it’s an iOS function – just press and hold and you get a context menu).  That’s really helping with sentences because I can remind myself of words that I forgot and I’m even keeping cards that I don’t know all the words because I’m learning hem from context.

My deck is a little hard to comprehend right now because I integrated it into the optimized deck and there is a lot of inconsistency.   So it’s hard to figure out which cards still need to be unsuspended.  Also, I’m suspending sentence cards if they at all confuse me, so it’s not clear I’ll be able to get to 1500 sentences without a lot of figuring things out.

Things have gotten a lot easier

For some reason, and I’m not sure exactly why, my accuracy has gotten a LOT better in the past month.  From about 90% to over 95%.  I think it has a lot to do with adding the sentences because I have pretty good accuracy with the sentences and I’m not being to strict with them.  I also think it is because I’m getting a lot more vocabulary practice just reading the sentences because there’s around 3-8 words in each sentence so it ups my vocabulary accuracy too.  I’ve also stopped adding vocab cards, so the cards are getting more mature.  Whatever the reason, it’s a very welcome development.  I wish I would have started earlier with the sentences – probably around 400 in the core vocab.

What’s next?

From here I will continue adding sentences until I catch up with the vocab cards.  That probably shouldn’t take more than a few weeks.  Then I will start adding both vocab and sentence cards together for a while and see how that goes.  There are a few grammar structures that I don’t completely understand, and I’ve been making them, so I will probably look those up.  I will probably browse through tae kim again and start adding some tae kim grammar cards.

I’ve written most of this before, but I thought I’d put it in one place.

What’s working so far:

• learning kana first
• skipping kanji
• finishing reviews every single day
• focusing on vocabulary
• using anki
• suspending katakana vocab
• studying new vocab at the beginning of he day

What I’d do differently:

• start with the optimized core deck from the very beginning
• start sentences sooner(around 500-100 vocab)
• don’t bother with other methods (pimsleur, rosetta stone, actual classes..)
• skip kanji completely (I learned ~400.  I could have learned 400 more vocab instead)
• don’t cram too much
• prioritize accuracy over speed