![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Nihongo Progress
Jan. 24th, 2003 11:16 amUp to Lesson 5-06 of the Rosetta Stone Japanese Level I software. Spent a couple of days going back over previous lessons. Was surprised how much I forgot, but happy with how much easier it is to say the sentences. Much is clarified in earlier lessons when you have examples and context from later lessons to draw on. I'm starting to get vague intuitive intimations of the workings of "wa" and "ga."
Learned katakana. Hah! I read them slower than Hiragana, but I can read them now. I can write them in the right stroke order (writing them is the only way to learn them, IMO), but I need a Japanese person to look at my writing and tell me whether it's legible or too American to live.
I still can't easily make sense of stories for first graders. The ones about real things like rabbits are easier than the ones about fantasy creatures. I have enough trouble with words for real things. Ogres throw me for a loop. Since I'm a fantasy writer, this is ironic.
I'm swimming in kanji flash cards and practicing with kanji quizzes online. Starting to learn the readings now. I do not know how anyone keeps all the readings straight. Verbs and nouns and adjectives, fine--but the monosyllabic combining forms blend into one another and are a pain to memorize. Examples help.
And: I hate RealAudio. I freaking hate it. A lot of sites offer RA files so you can hear the story you're trying to read, but right now I don't have it installed, because I got tired of battling it for control of my computer.
Learned katakana. Hah! I read them slower than Hiragana, but I can read them now. I can write them in the right stroke order (writing them is the only way to learn them, IMO), but I need a Japanese person to look at my writing and tell me whether it's legible or too American to live.
I still can't easily make sense of stories for first graders. The ones about real things like rabbits are easier than the ones about fantasy creatures. I have enough trouble with words for real things. Ogres throw me for a loop. Since I'm a fantasy writer, this is ironic.
I'm swimming in kanji flash cards and practicing with kanji quizzes online. Starting to learn the readings now. I do not know how anyone keeps all the readings straight. Verbs and nouns and adjectives, fine--but the monosyllabic combining forms blend into one another and are a pain to memorize. Examples help.
And: I hate RealAudio. I freaking hate it. A lot of sites offer RA files so you can hear the story you're trying to read, but right now I don't have it installed, because I got tired of battling it for control of my computer.
