Re: Himitsu no Akko-chan 88

On Tue, 29 Nov 2005 00:00:31 -0500, The Wanderer
<inverseparadox@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

>On 11/28/2005 11:10 PM, Abraham Evangelista wrote:
>
>> On Mon, 28 Nov 2005 22:33:25 -0500, The Wanderer
>> <inverseparadox@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>
>>> On 11/28/2005 09:43 PM, Abraham Evangelista wrote:
>
>>>> No particular reason. Probably oversight on my part. My reading
>>>> is definately the weak point in my japanese skills, and just
>>>> looking up kagami took more time than I'd care to admit.
>>>
>>> Reading is probably my strongest point, in terms of Japanese
>>> (although I consider myself still fairly weak even there), but
>>> writing - or, rather, expressing myself at all - is my biggest
>>> problem.
>>
>> Composition is almost always more difficult than interpretation. At
>> this point, with the aid of the visual cues, I've very few problems
>> with raw Anime. (leaving aside technical terms, and heavily accented
>> speech.)
>>
>> But simple gradschool level questions that I'm asked in class can
>> leave me flustered if they require an answer quickly. But it's not
>> normally the grammar that gets me... the Devil is in the vocabulary.
>> (or my lack there of.)
>
>In my case, the problem (that I've noticed so far) is largely my
>perfectionism; I could probably make myself sort-of understood if I were
>willing to risk speaking broken, laughably ungrammatical Japanese, but
>I'm not, and since I can't easily be certain of what is and is not
>"good" Japanese I don't really *try* to speak it at all.

Heh. Practice makes perfect. It's been my (admittedly limited)
experience with the few japanese I've spoken with, that by and large
they're willing to forgive my often hideous grammar. :-)

>>> I can *usually* manage to parse out roughly what something means,
>>> especially when it's encapsulated the way an episode title is, but
>>> there are still rather more holes in my understanding (grammar,
>>> etc.) than I'd like.
>>
>> Dictionary of basic Japanese Grammar.
>> http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/4789004546?v=glance
>> Dictionary of intermediate Japanese Grammar.
>> http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/4789007758?v=glance
>>
>> I've found these books to be extraordinarily helpful in learning to
>> understand the language. But they don't help my composition in the
>> slightest. :-)
>
>I actually have, by some standards (including my own of just a couple
>years ago), fairly extensive knowledge of Japanese grammar - just still
>not enough to quite get everything I come across. >_<
>
>As I said, however, I do still notice myself getting better; I can't
>necessarily parse more grammatical twiddles than I could before, but I
>can do so much more fluidly and with much less need to consult my
>reference materials (such as they are).
>
>>>> What got me was the Kai in kana. I figured it was some sort of
>>>> adjectival or verbal construct that I hadn't seen yet. I only
>>>> figured out what Yuukaishiken was after reading Galen's summary
>>>> and checking the Breen jdic for kidnapping. :-)
>>>
>>> Happens that that's the same dictionary I'm using, just almost
>>> certainly with a different interface. I've seen enough weird
>>> kana/kanji things in the course of translating text from various
>>> RPGs that I don't really blink an eye at things like this; you'd be
>>> surprised how often something which does have a kanji is written
>>> without it.
>>
>> Well in RPGs (well at least on older systems) display fonts were the
>> limiting factor. ISTR that in the bad old days, that early japanese
>> computer systems could only display katakana...
>
>It depends on the game, really. I've seen both kana-only and kana/kanji
>mixes on the SNES (although kana-only is certainly by far the more
>common), and before that there really wasn't *room* to store the
>necessary kanji unless they wanted to special-case a few characters.

I get by fairly well with a decent dictionary and the kana in 8-bit
games, but it doesn't help me practice at all, so I quit playing them.
>> <grumble>
>> But there's no excuse in printed material!!
>> </grumble>
>
>...the thing, though, is that there doesn't necessarily *need* to have
>an excuse; there are some cases where it's reasonable to think that the
>kanji would be harder for a typical reader to understand than the kana
>would, and there are other cases where the writer may think that the
>kana are obvious enough that a kanji is not needed. It's learning to
>recognize the "so common as to be obvious" usages that makes the
>difference, sometimes...

Two thoughts... Furigana, and AAAAARGH!


>>>> Right about here, I ran out of steam, (And break time) and
>>>> returned to my homework. :-) Seeing all those kanji I didn't
>>>> recognize just kinda knocked the wind out of me!
>>>
>>> Whereas I deal with unfamiliar kanji all the time, so it didn't
>>> really bother me that much. What *I* usually have the most problems
>>> with is kanji I can't see clearly enough - low resolution or bad
>>> images, which crop up 'way more often than I'd like.
>>
>> Amen to that. How am I supposed to do a radical search when I can't
>> even make out the radicals? (Or is it just that my eyes are always
>> drawn to the other obvious "features" of a megami poster scan...)
>
>And a 16x16 (or, worse still, 8x8) font tile in an RPG can be worse even
>than that. It doesn't help when, as occasionally happens, the kanji
>involved isn't *in* edict...
>
>(I still haven't reported that one for addition, since I haven't been
>able to figure out which Unicode kanji it is, so I can't identify it
>other than by pointing people to the game itself.)
>
>>>> Either you know many more kanji than I do, or you've got a better
>>>> input and search system than the one I'm using. In either case,
>>>> I am in awe of your l33+ 5k!11z.
>>>
>>> Almost certainly, a better input and search system; I would
>>> probably be surprised if the total number of kanji I "know" (as in,
>>> can identify on sight without looking them up) came to more than a
>>> few dozen.
>>>
>>> I make routine, habitual and extensive use of kdrill, which is
>>> intended as a kanji drill program but also includes a very nice (if
>>> still limited) search tool; the best feature is probably its
>>> radical search capability, which is how I managed to identify most
>>> of those kanji. There are a few tricks I've learned to work around
>>> the program's limitations, but it's still quite powerful at its
>>> base. I feed it with a local copy of edict (updated whenever I see
>>> there's been a new release), although in theory you could use any
>>> dictionary in the same format.
>>
>> Kdrill? I'll have to try that. Sensei has been complaining that I
>> never seem to memorize the Kanji we're assigned... Maybe a drilling
>> program would help.
>
>I don't know how good it is for drilling on user-determined kanji (there
>may be selection functions I've never used, since I don't do drill with
>it very much), but it's surprisingly useful for what it does do. Of
>course, single-kanji memorization is of strictly limited utility, but
>for as far as it goes...
>
>The version I use is for Linux, but it may be available for other
>operating systems as well.it can be found by Googling, but the main site
>is at
>
>http://www.bolthole.com/kdrill/
>
>> Normally I use Jquicktrans (fed by the same edict), entering the
>> kanji into the drawing pad in the ms IMEI. This wasn't terribly
>> efficient when I was working with my old desktop, but it's wonderful
>> now that I've got a tablet pc.
>
>I'm handicapped somewhat by not actually *having* an IME, short of
>typing the romaji into JEDI and copy-pasting the result.

*THAT* I couldn't imagine. I mean, sure the whole kana (or romaji) to
kanji conversion works IF you know the kanji you want, but how do you
look up a kanji you don't know, if you don't know it's pronunciation?

> I also would
>have no clue of where to start for trying to draw most kanji, and little
>if any more idea of how to determine how many strokes are involved in a
>given character.

The hundred or so that I can reliably read, I only managed thanks to a
(as sensei described it) "grade booster" writing class. :-) I ought
to spend more time writing the ones I'm getting, but my handwriting
rivals drug prescription scrawl for illegibility.

>
>> Sadly, last weekend I managed to lose my stylus, making handwriting
>> input impossible until the replacement arrives, so I was forced to
>> fall back onto radical lookup, at which (in 4chan speak) I FAIL.
>
>That's not just 4chan-speak, it's prevalent across fairly sizable swaths
>of the Internet. ^_^
>
>I wasn't always very good at it either, but I've developed fair skill
>over time. There are still tricks I continually find myself wanting to
>use which aren't possible but would make things *so* much easier, but
>there's quite a bit you can do once you begin to get the hang of it.
>
>> I've got a Kanji lookup dictionary which serves me pretty well for at
>> least the joyou stuff, but it's SKIP method, which doesn't help my
>> generally poor recognition of radicals.
>
>kdrill's SKIP search has been virtually useless the few times I've tried
>to use it - I'm fairly certain it's buggy, although it isn't helped by
>the fact that I have little to no comprehension of the SKIP method.

SKIP isn't terribly difficult. I find it actually easier to use than
radical look up, since it requires less familiarity with the radicals.
The downside to SKIP is that it doesn't reinforce the learning of
radicals (and thier associated meanings), and it requires you to be
able to count strokes. That having been said, it shouldn't take any
more than an hour or two to learn how to count strokes.

All that being said, if you can look up via radical, you're ahead of
the game.

>
>>>> Can I call you aniki? :-)
>>>
>>> <grin> If you want. I'm nowhere near fluent - in fact, overall I'd
>>> probably still rate my skills as being pretty crappy - but I'm many
>>> miles ahead of where I was a few years ago, and despite slow
>>> progress I *am* still getting better.
>>
>> Self Study?
>
>Entirely.

SCARY.
--
Kyzoku ni naritai...
Abraham Evangelista
.

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