I ordered Eve Kushner's "Crazy for Kanji" recently, but just got around to reading it this week. So far, it lives up to its introduction. Kushner's enthusiasm is contagious and her comments confirmed some of my suspicions, so I am looking forward to the rest of the book.
Arriving today was James Heisig's "Remembering the Kanji." I resisted buying this book for a long time. I've never been a big fan of mnemonics and memory tricks because I thought that they would detract from my learning. But, I am softening in my old age and trying to be more open to other ideas. And I have come to the shocking realization that I've always used tricks; I just never saw them as such because they weren't the same tricks being taught or used by other people. So, I spent some time just thinking about learning Japanese and made some decisions about how I want to progress, based on what I know will work for me.
I've tried the learn-by-textbook method, which I hate, but is necessary due to the fact that I'm enrolled in a college Japanese course. Immersion works really well for me, so I'm trying to adapt that as well as I can in my hectic and very non-Japanese lifestyle. And after thinking a lot about Sesame Street in the past two weeks as I worked on my speech, I've decided to add as much children's programming and books in Japanese as I can.
The real problem that I had was in my own expectations. I wanted to learn Japanese perfectly, with immaculate grammar, with an expansive vocabulary, similar to my grasp of English. I've decided that I'm about 41 years too late to do that. It just isn't going to happen as a non-native speaker, no matter how much I want it to. So I re-evaluated my goals. What do I really want? I want to be able to speak Japanese. Well, I speak English every day with using advanced grammar or vocabulary. So why I am I trying to learn Japanese like that? It was real DUH moment. But I am hard-headed and stubborn. No doubt about that :)
My friend has mentioned a couple of times that I really should read out loud more. So, I've been doing that and my pronunciation and comfort with speaking in Japanese has improved a lot in a very short amount of time. I've been doing well with my written assignments in Japanese class, and I can respond to questions (although I tend to reply in English), so this has been a really good supplement. Hopefully, I can start to break free of my "I won't say it unless I know it's right" mentality.
Oddly, I learned Spanish just through day-to-day conversations and I spoke a very broken version of Spanglish with my employees years ago. I realized that I didn't mind making mistakes with them because their English was just as weak as my Spanish. So we would just laugh and point and draw pictures and use baby talk and everyone was happy. But my friend's English is excellent, and so I hesitate to speak Japanese. I really have to get over it.
The real motivator this week came from my five year-old son. He and I play word games in the car all the time. Recently, we have spent lots of time with Japanese words: counting, colors, animals, food, etc. One day, we were driving and I was telling him something. He responded with, "Sou desu ka?" and giggled. Learning Japanese is fun for him. When did it stop being fun for me and turn into something I had to do or else? I know that learning another language is full of roadblocks and hurdles. Otherwise, everyone would do it, I guess. Time to Godzilla stomp those hurdles and get back to having fun.
Arriving today was James Heisig's "Remembering the Kanji." I resisted buying this book for a long time. I've never been a big fan of mnemonics and memory tricks because I thought that they would detract from my learning. But, I am softening in my old age and trying to be more open to other ideas. And I have come to the shocking realization that I've always used tricks; I just never saw them as such because they weren't the same tricks being taught or used by other people. So, I spent some time just thinking about learning Japanese and made some decisions about how I want to progress, based on what I know will work for me.
I've tried the learn-by-textbook method, which I hate, but is necessary due to the fact that I'm enrolled in a college Japanese course. Immersion works really well for me, so I'm trying to adapt that as well as I can in my hectic and very non-Japanese lifestyle. And after thinking a lot about Sesame Street in the past two weeks as I worked on my speech, I've decided to add as much children's programming and books in Japanese as I can.
The real problem that I had was in my own expectations. I wanted to learn Japanese perfectly, with immaculate grammar, with an expansive vocabulary, similar to my grasp of English. I've decided that I'm about 41 years too late to do that. It just isn't going to happen as a non-native speaker, no matter how much I want it to. So I re-evaluated my goals. What do I really want? I want to be able to speak Japanese. Well, I speak English every day with using advanced grammar or vocabulary. So why I am I trying to learn Japanese like that? It was real DUH moment. But I am hard-headed and stubborn. No doubt about that :)
My friend has mentioned a couple of times that I really should read out loud more. So, I've been doing that and my pronunciation and comfort with speaking in Japanese has improved a lot in a very short amount of time. I've been doing well with my written assignments in Japanese class, and I can respond to questions (although I tend to reply in English), so this has been a really good supplement. Hopefully, I can start to break free of my "I won't say it unless I know it's right" mentality.
Oddly, I learned Spanish just through day-to-day conversations and I spoke a very broken version of Spanglish with my employees years ago. I realized that I didn't mind making mistakes with them because their English was just as weak as my Spanish. So we would just laugh and point and draw pictures and use baby talk and everyone was happy. But my friend's English is excellent, and so I hesitate to speak Japanese. I really have to get over it.
The real motivator this week came from my five year-old son. He and I play word games in the car all the time. Recently, we have spent lots of time with Japanese words: counting, colors, animals, food, etc. One day, we were driving and I was telling him something. He responded with, "Sou desu ka?" and giggled. Learning Japanese is fun for him. When did it stop being fun for me and turn into something I had to do or else? I know that learning another language is full of roadblocks and hurdles. Otherwise, everyone would do it, I guess. Time to Godzilla stomp those hurdles and get back to having fun.
5 comments:
Thanks so much for mentioning my book! What kinds of suspicions did you have?!
My suspicions were that I could study Kanji before reaching any set 'level' of Japanese language proficiency. Sure, that is the premise of Heisig's book, but it's different somehow. I think his is more "you can remember the meanings of the Kanji" as an end in itself while what I was thinking was "I can study Japanese, but also learn more Japanese and actually have a deeper understanding of it through learning Kanji." Not a very lucid explanation, but I hope that you will understand my meaning.
Thank you for stopping by my blog! I'm enjoying the book quite a bit :)
I recently bought Crazy for Kanji too and should start using it soon!
Let me know when you finally broke free of "I won't say it unless I know it's right" mentality. We will celebrate the occasion by voice chatting in Japanese!
You're not even likely to catch me for a chat in English! I just don't sit still for long these days. But if I ever reach a point worthy of celebrating, I'll let you know. :D
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