Day 150!

皆さんこんばんは。

Here I am on day 150 of learning Japanese! I've been continuing to practice everyday using mostly Anki and my various grammar resources. I also listen to at least one audio and/or video lesson per day on JapanesePod101. Since starting this phase of studying on January 21, I've only missed a couple days of studying due to extenuating circumstances on those days. Life happens! :)

I've been focusing a lot on being able to read. Being able to read real Japanese without furigana over the kanji is a big goal of mine. So far it's going really well. I try to read articles on NHK World News and some other books I have. I've even been trying to read ハリー・ポッターと賢者の石 aka Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. I haven't gotten very far reading it yet but I've been mostly working on my 35+ new words per day in Anki. 

I finally got around to doing another post on Lang-8 the other day. I need to do more of that so I can get better at making more complex sentences. I do ok with basic sentences about simple topics. It's when it gets into more important stuff or thoughts/feelings that I need a lot of practice. I also need more practice on conjugating verbs into terms other than present so I can improve on them even though I know some.

It's been interesting to see how I'm able to retain new words pretty well despite the high amount of words I'm trying to learn each day. There are some that are harder for me than others that take quite a while but some come a little easier. Sometimes I dream about the new words I'm learning or I often get a specific challenging word stuck in my mind until I seem to have it down.

I don't have an exact on how many words I know at this point, and I'm still working on many of them. I also just have an estimate since I can't be completely exact since I have to eliminate all the overlapping words that are the same. My best estimate is that I know around 3000 words right now. That is pretty exciting! That averages out to be about 20 words per day since I started, which sounds about right. That has been my usual pace most of the time in learning new vocabulary words.

I have also been working on learning to write kanji. It really doesn't seem as hard as many people make it out to be. I write in kana constantly everyday when I study, and it sure can be a space saver and more helpful to know how to write the kanji and not have to do everything long-hand in kana. 

Here is some writing practice I did yesterday:

Most of the kanji are pretty logical in stroke order, and of course many components/radicals follow the same stroke order each time. I'm excited to see how I'll progress as I learn how to properly write more characters.

Can't wait to see where I'm at next time I update!

じゃまたね。

Progress Update - Day 59 - Sentences, Particles, and Verbs

Konnichiwa!

I'm happy to report that my progress is still coming along quite well. I've been working really hard to make simple sentences and understand the particles that string sentences together. I don't have them all down yet, but I've learned some of the main ones and have been practicing. The lessons I've done on Rosetta Stone make more sense now.

I've also been working on learning more verbs and how to conjugate them. When I was learning some Spanish 10 years ago I had done pretty well with verb conjugation, but hadn't found what worked for me in Japanese until the last couple of weeks. All the resources I had come across up until the last few weeks were very confusing and hadn't been very helpful. A lot of resources either focus on only one verb form, or do a mixture of all of them kind of randomly without teaching the differences. Finding the right resources that don't hold back on you (babying you) and tell you everything you need to know is invaluable! Finally I was able to find some better resources that are more comprehensive so I could understand better. It has been a relief to finally understand what the dictionary forms of the verbs are and the rules about them, and the differences between the various conjugations I had been studying. So finally I'm on the right track to learn in a similar way to how I did with Spanish with verbs, and I know I'll be able to do well with practice.

As for my vocabulary, I now know around 1200+ words which puts me still in the range of learning about 20 words a day on average. I've been watching a couple of anime shows that I've viewed in the past and have been understanding more and more words. I have been thinking of it as kind of a measuring stick for myself to test how well my vocabulary has been coming along. When I first started learning several weeks ago, I had only been able to recognize a couple of words here and there. Now I'm recognizing one or more words per sentence, plus I'm able to pick out some of the grammar and particles. To continue understanding better and practice making sentences, I've been writing in a notebook some simple sentences so I can remember the grammar and more words without relying on apps.

Since my last post, some of the vocabulary topics I've learned are:

-More verbs
-Entertainment
-Emotions
-Computers
-Holidays
-More foods and occupations
-Pharmacy and health words
-Sports
-Money
-Post Office and Banking

I've been practicing reading more, using some different books I have, and also visiting the NHK Easy News site for practice. I'm not able to understand a whole lot yet but to be able to recognize what country an article is about and what the topic is can be pretty cool after only a couple months of study. Again it's like a measuring stick to see how I'm doing. As the days and weeks pass, I know I'll be able to understand more and I have to celebrate each baby step.

I have been working hard to recognize kanji better, learn some of the readings, and how to write them. I've been studying around 50+ kanji as a start using some apps to help me recognize them better and remember their meanings. I have a few down pretty good on knowing what they stand for and some of the more common readings of them. I can't wait to know more so that I can read more material without having to rely on hiragana translations of kanji.

I'm looking forward to learning more verbs and the proper conjugations in the coming days, and also getting the particle usage down so I can make more and better sentences. I also hope to do better on knowing more kanji by sight and the most common readings.

Until next time! Thanks for reading!

Sayounara!