dailydoseofjapanese

[dailydoseofjapanese]

Tips and inspiration I got from Fluent In 3 Months by Benny Lewis

I recently read Fluent in 3 Months by Benny Lewis. He’s a polyglot who was relentlessly mocked and made fun of in the langblr community a few years ago. Couple of days ago I came across his book on Scribd and decided to give it a go. I have gathered some of the language learning tips and nuggets of inspiration I got from his book. Many of them are nothing new or groundbreaking, but still legit, good pieces of advice or just great words of encouragement. Some of these tips may not make sense taken out of its context and listed like this, so if that’s the case, feel free to message me and ask me what it’s about or read the book yourself. • Learn a language to use it, to learn about the culture and people of the country, not to gain some side-benefits.  • Live the language instead of learning it. • You can always make time to learn a language.  • Surround yourself by your target language in your day-to-day living. • Start speaking your target language as soon as possible, don’t wait until you’re “ready”.  • You should put two hours or more into studying the language every day, and ideally more.  • Experiment with different studying methods to see which ones work for you.  • Find fun, enjoyable ways to study.  • Accents are charming, and native speakers speak in many different accents too.  • Don’t compare yourself to others.  • Push yourself out of your comfort zone and through the frustrating parts.  • Keep going despite obstacles. • Be proud of your achievements.  • Set specific end goals within specific time frames.  • By giving yourself a short deadline you are more likely to study efficiently.  • Divide your language learning progress into “mini missions” where you tackle one problem at the time.  • Make language learning fun by assigning yourself language learning tasks you enjoy. • You can use CEFR to measure your level of fluency.  • Remember to take breaks to avoid burnout.  • Announce your language learning mission to the world to make yourself more accountable.  • Make sure you can both recognize and produce the new words you learn.  • Use associations and visualizations when learning new words.  • Use flashcards. • Implement spaced repetition system.  • Start learning a language by learning full phrases or sentences.  • Use songs to remember sentences.  • Learn mini-scripts of typical, often used sentences and predictable exchanges.  • Learn words and sentences you use the most first. • Create yourself an immersion environment and expose yourself to native speakers.  • What matters is that you can understand and make yourself understood, not having perfect grammar and accent.  • Body languages and social cues will help you understand what the other person is saying. • Listen for any particular words or segments of a person’s speech that you can understand and extrapolate what is being said from that.  • You can use cheat-sheets when conversing with natives.  • Go for “close enough” rather than perfect, keep it simple and be flexible.  • Being incorrect is fine.  • If you get corrected, take a note of it to get it right next time.  • Don’t switch to your native language or the common language, stick to your target language.  • No language is too difficult to learn.  • Refer to cognates for heaps of “free” vocabulary.  • Learn modal verbs (can, should, would like to, must, have to, want to) early on.  • Learn conversational connectors or filler words to keep the conversation flowing.  • “It’s not necessarily about having a ‘perfect’ approach, but continuing with a learning strategy that encourages you to improve and helps you make those improvements.”  • Always look for ways to improve.  • Hit the books and study as much grammar and do as many book-assigned exercises as you need to understand what you are learning.  • Study through input - movies, TV-shows, radio, etc.  • If you’re listening to an audio, take notes to make sure you are following what you’re hearing, or try to repeat it over to yourself. • Take an officially accredited examination for your language.  • Once you’re good at conversing in the language, practice writing and reading more to reach a higher level of fluency. • Have inner dialogues with yourself in your target language.  • You can learn in every moment by getting inspired by your surroundings.  • Emulate your clothing sense, body language, distance between speakers, facial expressions, the topics you discuss, and all the things related to what native speakers would do to seem more like a native speaker.  • Fix your pronunciation of certain letters/sounds early on to have a better accent.  • Do sentence drilling and repeat native-recorded phrases. • Sing in your target language. • Pay attention to the particular prosody (rhythm, stress and intonation in speech) patterns of the language.  • Trying to become a polyglot is a terrible goal. You can only become a polyglot if you are passionate about each language and not because you want to ‘collect’ a large number of languages.  • If you’re not willing to put in the work, your chances of success drop.  • It’s better to focus on one language until you’re comfortable with it and then turn your full attention to a second language.  • Never listen to anyone who tells you what your limitations are.  • There is no secret or magic formula to learning languages.  • Use different body language and a sense of personality, a different mindset for each of your languages to compartmentalize them in your mind.  • Learn basic grammar terminology (article, conjugation, adjective, case, preposition, possessive…), it will help you understand the language and your textbooks better.  • Try laddering: learning a language through another language.  • There are plenty of free or very low cost resources available, use them. • Spending a lot of money on language resources might pressure you to work harder because you’ve spend so money, but it’s debatable.  • No course can be the one all-encompassing solution to your language learning problems.  • Any time you spend researching for the best materials (or methods) will have been better spent actually practicing the language.  • Keep a language log and document your language learning experience in some way. • Join some kind of language learning network. 

[dailydoseofjapanese]

there's this not-well-known youtube channel (most videos have like 50-100 views) of this japanese man just walking or driving through nature and it's so peaceful. it's really nice to just pretend you're there and look at pretty scenery. go watch his latest video where he drives through the cherry blossoms along びわ湖 and experience childlike wonder with me

[dailydoseofjapanese]

欠落感

けつらくかん

feeling that something is missing; sense that something is incomplete

彼とのコミュニケーションが少なくて欠落感を感じてしまう。 かれ と の コミュニケーション が すくなくて けつらくかん を かんじて しまう。 I don't have much communication with him so I feel like something is lacking.

[dailydoseofjapanese]

桜梅桃李 (o-bai-to-ri) “never compare yourself to others”

This yo-ji-juku-go (Japanese 4-character idiom) is comprised of 4 beloved Japanese trees. They are:

桜 = cherry (sakura)

梅 = apricot (ume)

桃 = peach (momo)

李 = plum (sumomo)

Each of these iconic trees blossoms in its own time and in its own unique way.

桜 (sakura) are of course the cherry blossom trees famous for blooming spectacularly and incredibly briefly once a year, usually in April. Sakura trees in full bloom is an annual event, and people go to their local park to see them, take photos, and have picnics underneath them. It's such a big deal that it's reported on the weather forecast, with reporters commenting on how quickly the "sakura front" is moving northwards across the country.

梅 (ume) is the "ume" in umeshu! This is a sweet liqueur which is made from soaking ume in sake. It tastes amazing, and is one of the things I miss most about Japan. Japanese learners will no doubt recognise "ume" as usually being translated as "plum", however it is technically closer to the Western apricot.

桃 (momo) is one of the best-loved fruits in Japan. There is even a fairy story called "Momo-taro" about a little boy who comes from inside a peach. He grows up to be a great hero, of course, and saves everyone from a demon. "Momo" is also a fairly common girls' name.

李 (sumomo) are known as "Japanese plums" or "Asian plums". The trees are famous for their delicate white flowers. They usually bloom just before the sakura. Whilst not as famous or as showy as sakura, they are well-loved for their elegance, and for being a sign of spring.

This one-off calligraphy artwork is available on my Etsy shop here:

[dailydoseofjapanese]

総括

そうかつ

① summarization; summary; generalization

② review (by labour or political movements of past activities, results, etc.)

これまでの情報を総括してください。 これ まで の じょうほう を そうかつ して ください。 Please summarize the information so far.

[dailydoseofjapanese]

The Difference Between に and へ

Most of the beginner textbooks will teach learners that に is used for destination and へ is used for direction but there are some explanation that are missing and that is what confusing to many learners.

• 公園に行きます。

• 公園へ行きます。

Both sentences are correct. Both means "I'm going to the park".

But... there is a slight nuance difference. When you use に, you put the destination (which is the park) as the main thing you want the listener to know that the place you want to go is the park. The final destination you will arrive at is the park.

On the other hand, if you use へ, you want the listener to feel that you are making a move, you are making a journey, a process, an effort to go to the park. In other words, へ somehow emphasize on your journey to a place.

Let's say you're flying from UK all the way to Australia, that will take at least 20-22 hours by flight. The journey is extremely long and you want the listener to feel that, so you could say by using the particle へ: 私はオーストラリアへ行きます。

Now, the following part is what most teachers or textbooks didn't tell you. A study shows that more and more Japanese people are using に, and へ has gone out of fashion. According to the survey, one of the reasons may be due to globalization and how easily people are connected around the world through the Internet that people don't feel the journey or the distance is long. Therefore, they don't see the need to use へ anymore.

WARNING!!!

There is a grammar point that you MUST use へ instead of に。The pattern is:

へ + の + Noun

Examples:

• 先生へのプレゼント。Gift for teacher.

• 帰宅への道。The way home.

Another situation which needs to use へ is when the news anchor announces this:

台風が北へ向かっています。

The typhoon is heading north.

If you use に and say 台風が北に向かっています, it means you are very sure that the typhoon will land in the north. No one can predict 100% where it will stop or land so it is incorrect to use に in this sentence.

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Vocabulary used in this lesson:

公園 (こうえん) park, playground

プレゼント present, gift

帰宅 (きたく) home

道 (みち) way

台風 (たいふう) typhoon

北 (きた) north

[dailydoseofjapanese]

shinyou | 信用 | しんよう

eng. = credit, trust

trans. = "There's an image in the goggles...No way! What's going on??" "Are you gonna believe what I'm saying now?" "Luna! I don't really understand what's happening, but Naru-chan is about to die!!"

#shinyou #credit #trust #belief #しんよう #信用 #poor naru-chan #it's rough being used as a plot device every 2-4 chapters #bssm vocabulary #luna #tsukino usagi #daily dose of japanese #japanese vocabulary #japanese studyblr

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sakebu | 叫ぶ | さけぶ

eng. = to shout or scream

trans. = "Now do you believe what I'm saying?? Repeat after me: shout moon!!"

"Shout Moon, Tiara Boomerang!"

#sakebu #叫ぶ #さけぶ #bssm vocabulary #daily dose of japanese #luna being her beautiful bossy self #first day on the job #scream #shout #yell

[dailydoseofjapanese]

Japanese word of the day

いってらっしゃい (Hiragana)

行ってらしゃい (Kanji)

pronunciation - itte-rashai

Meaning - have a good day or see you later.

Used with - family members leaving house, colleagues going for work trip, meetings etc.,

If you want to learn a bit more about the history of this word, please read more!

いっしょに日本語をべんきょうする！がんばってください！

Translation: let's study Japanese together! Let's work hard together!

Romanji: issho ni nihongo o benkyou suru! Gambatte kudasai!

I recently found out that this word which has come to mean have a good day, literally translates to "Go and come back!"

Basically the 行って (pronunciation: itte) means Go (or Journey, you will see this 行 Kanji in almost every sentence where something is leaving, going somewhere for example 行ってきます meaning "I'm going!') and (い) らしゃい (pronunciation: irashai) means come or welcome back

Basically,

行って + (い) らしゃい = Go + come back

Ko-San on Instagram explained it very well. The explanation goes like this -

In ancient Japan since there was no world order, anyone leaving on a work trip, or anything else from the village could die for various reasons. And Japanese people were firm believers of the power of words, this belief is called Kotodama. Therefore, by saying "Go and come back!" they are wishing their loved ones or colleagues a good journey.

#itterashai #spy x family

[dailydoseofjapanese]

shimei | 使命 |しめい

eng. = mission

trans. = "You have a mission, Usagi-chan! You need to find your comrades and defeat the enemy! Moreover, we need to search for and recover the princess. Moreover....."

#使命 #shimei #しめい #Luna #I really like that she gets assigned a laundry list #the crystal the friends the enemy the princess plus the mysterious guy in the mask... there's so much for a girl to think about #mission #bssm vocabulary #heroic structure of the fairy tale

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[dailydoseofjapanese]

kinjo | 近所 | きんじょ

eng. = neighborhood

trans. = shinji: "~~~~ she's yelling so loud the whole neighborhood is gonna notice." usagi's mama: "Okay, okay!! Come back inside already... shees"

#きんじょ #近所 #kinjo #neighborhood #bssm vocabulary #daily dose of japanese #I honestly forgot how much physical comedy there is in these first few chapters #I feel for usagi's mom here #also their front door looks a lot like a chocolate bar #I love the panels where we get a slice of normal Tsukino family life tho #they're so cute and lighthearted #I always felt kinda sad that her family faded out of the story in later volumes

[dailydoseofjapanese]

soieba | そいえば

eng. = by the way, come to think of it

trans. = "come to think of it, I've heard there's been a lot of robberies of jewelry stores around Tokyo, lately. It's scary bad right now--"

#soieba #そいえば #come to think of it #by the way #for that matter #i dont remember this friend's name #bssm vocabulary #naru-chan #usagi #trading gossip about recent felonies around town at lunch #high school life

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hagasu | 剥がす | はがす

eng. = to peel off

trans. = "What is it, lil cat? What's up with these bandages, anyway? You want me to peel it off, huh? Okay, I got it, I got it!"

#はがす #剥がす #hagasu #poor luna #bssm vocabulary #also poor Usagi #needs to keep those bandages for herself #to peel off #japanese studyblr #daily dose of japanese #my paperback version doesn't have the kanji so now there's even more to learn #sigh

[dailydoseofjapanese]

kuse | 癖 | くせ

eng. = habit, esp. a bad habit or a vice

trans. = "Seriously, Usagi, it's unbelievable that a girl of your age still has the bad habit of eating lunch early."

#naru-chan #bssm vocabulary #kuse #habit #くせ #癖

[dailydoseofjapanese]

rouka | 担任 | ろうか

eng. = corridor, hallway

trans. = "Mm... it's a sad state of affairs when a helpless young girl like me has to stand in the hallway all alone~"

#tsukino usagi #cutie #rouka #ろうか #廊下 #bssm vocabulary #daily dose of japanese

[dailydoseofjapanese]

tannin | 担任 | たんにん

eng. = homeroom, in charge of

trans. = "This is my homeroom teacher, Ms. Sakurada Haruna."

#bssm vocabulary #daily dose of japanese #tannin #たんにん #担任 #bit characters who make me happy