AJATT Hall of Fame

Posted on May 9, 2013 by

20130508-182040.jpg

I’ve been following the website AllJapaneseAllTheTime.com (AJATT for short) for ideas and inspiration on learning Japanese and Korean. I also follow the site author, Khatzumoto, on Twitter as well.

AJATT has been really helpful in keeping me motivated and not giving up. Believe me, I’ve wanted to give up many times. Not because I don’t like Japanese and Korean, but because I feel really embarrassed sometimes, humiliated or frustrated at my lack of progress.

But when I read Khatzumoto’s advice on Twitter, I get inspired to keep trying, explore new methods, etc. I even keep a collection of “ajatt-isms” on my iPhone which I read every once in a while.1 The photo above is from my smartphone.

This post is a collection of (in my humble opinion), the best advice from Khatzumoto on Twitter. I hope it will inspire you to keep learning a foreign language too.

Ajattisms:

@ajatt: The trick is not to get good at Japanese but to get good at learning Japanese.

@ajatt: Chose anything but the null option. The null option is not an option.

@ajatt: The best way to not forget Japanese is to not not come into contact with it.

@ajatt: Having momentum beats being right. It’s easier to correct course than to get moving. #immersion #SRS

@ajatt: We give up way too easily on ourselves. You don’t suck, your method does. Fix or replace the method. You’re fine.

@ajatt: It is more important to know more Japanese at lunchtime than you did at breakfast…than it is to have a good plan.

@ajatt: Somewhere between “give up completely” and “do it all 100% perfectly” is the level where things actually get done. #immersion

@ajatt: Most dangerous AJATT tip ever: Imitating the way L2 speakers speak your L1 is a good way to improve your L2 pronunciation.

@ajatt: You’re not stupid; you’re not a bad person. The advice just didn’t quite work for you as presented.

@ajatt: First, you kinda get what you give. Then, you give more than you get. Finally, you get more than you give. #input #immersion #thedip #output

@ajatt: Push “play”. Volume up. Good. You’re done. #exposure

@ajatt: You can’t learn a language you’re not exposed to. #exposure #immersion

@ajatt: Whether or not you suck doesn’t matter. All that matters is your direction: are you headed towards or away from Sucksville?

@ajatt: Don’t read a book once carefully. Read it 10 times, 100 times, sloppily. #multipass #reading

@ajatt: You rarely try to eat food without cutting it up to fit that dainty little mouth of yours. So why do you try to do tasks without timeboxing?

@ajatt: Don’t try to improve your technique. Improve your practice (volume, depth, frequency). Your technique will improve on its own.

@ajatt: Don’t work on yourself. Work on your environment. Your environment will work on you. #exposure #immersion

@ajatt: Do NOT get it right the first time, or even the first 9999 times. Get it GOING the first time. Get it right later. #timeboxing

@ajatt: Be patient enough to wait for effects. Be too impatient to wait to start on causes.

@ajatt: You don’t suck. You’re just not ripe yet. Maybe you need to brown bag yourself :) #immersion

Enjoy and good luck fellow language-learners.

1 Khatzumoto, if you’re reading this, I am not a stalker, but I do enjoy learning language a lot. ;-)

Posted in Japanese, Language | Leave a comment

Dandelions

Posted on May 7, 2013 by

It is now the month of Satsuki (皐月) in the traditional Japanese calendar and the weather in Seattle has been very comfortable lately,1 so I’ve been taking photos in the yard again. This is in my backyard, just outside the den, where I usually write the blog:

Untitled

Somehow, it reminds of a poem from the Hyakunin Isshu poetry anthology:

君がため Kimi ga tame
春の野に出でて Haru no no ni idete
若菜つむ Wakana tsumu
わが衣手に Waga koromode ni
雪はふりつつ Yuki wa furitsutsu

Which Professor Mostow translates as:

For my lord’s sake
I went out into the fields of spring
to pick young greens
while on my robe-sleeves
the snow kept falling and falling.

Watching nature around the home is really interesting. :) My daughter thinks white dandelions are “wish flowers”. If you blow on them, they will make your wish come true. ;)

P.S. In Japanese, dandelions are called tanpopo (タンポポ), in case you were wondering.

P.P.S. Other photos around the yard are here. The photo above was my favorite.

1 In the last few years, summers seemed colder and shorter, while winters were longer. This year seems pretty different. I’m looking forward to summer.

Posted in Photography, Poetry | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Writer’s Block

Posted on May 6, 2013 by

Hi all,

I’ve been concerned about my struggles to keep up the blog lately, when I finally figured out the problem: I have writer’s block. I have about 8 unfinished posts right now, but I can’t finish them for some reason. I open them up, look at them, realize I don’t know what to say, get distracted and do something else.

Then I read in Wikipedia:

Other blocks, especially the more serious kind, may be produced by adverse circumstances in a writer’s life or career: physical illness, depression, the end of a relationship, financial pressures, a sense of failure….It has been suggested that writer’s block is more than just a mentality. Under stress, a human brain will “shift control from the cerebral cortex to the limbic system”. The limbic system is associated with the instinctual processes, such as “fight or flight” response. Because the person is primarily thinking in instinctual (learned) behaviors, creative processes are hindered. The person is often unaware of the change, which may lead them to believe they are creatively “blocked”.

That makes a lot of sense to me. Well, I don’t know what a “limbic system” is, but I understand the rest. ;)

The last few months have been pretty intense. Work has been very busy (more so than in the past), but also the family and I have been slowly preparing for the coming baby. Between the two, I just go to sleep a lot, or play Nintendo games.1

I think I’m stuck on “survival mode” right now. Language studies are getting neglected,2 I don’t read books much anymore, and don’t really keep up on projects much. I think I’m just trying to hang onto the train for now. In the meantime, I’m still writing, but the quality might suffer a bit.

Soon though, I might try to take a couple days off and get some rest though. I’ve been working a lot of hours lately, and I think I deserve a small break.

As always, thanks for reading. :)

1 Currently enjoying The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess…my daughter loves watching me play too.

2 I almost never study Korean or Latin anymore. I really want to, but the motivation is just gone for now.

Posted in Family | Leave a comment

Beginner Buddhism S2, Lesson 8: Buddhism and Monasticism

Posted on May 6, 2013 by

Hi all,

Busy weekend, but I did find time to post another episode on season 2 of the Beginner Buddhism series on YouTube:

This one helps explore the notion of monasticism in Buddhism, what are monks and nuns, etc. Apologies to Theravada viewers for screwing up the Pali terms. ;p I haven’t had much free time lately, so I pretty much filmed this in one shot and off-the-cuff.

There are 2 episodes left in the BB series, and after that I think I’ve covered everything I wanted to cover, so I don’t really plan on making anymore.

Anyhow, enjoy!

Posted in Buddhism, Religion, Theravada | Leave a comment

Politeness and Hierarchy

Posted on May 2, 2013 by

Categorisation-hierarchy-top2down

One of the lessons I learned from dating my wife is that in Japanese culture, it’s important to know your place among those around you. The rules are pretty simple, but I also realized that they apply to other cultures, such as Korean culture, Vietnamese culture, etc:

  • If someone is older than you, you should politer speech.
  • The greater the difference, the politer the speech.
  • For people younger than you, you can usually be more casual, but not too much.
  • For children and such, it sounds awkward if you are too polite.

The rules are very simple (simple enough that people all over Asia have been following them for centuries), but this was difficult for me to understand at first. As an American, I am used to calling my bosses by their first name, and talking fairly casual. For example, my boss here at work is about 10 years older than me, and has been in the company twice as long as me. And yet, we talk almost as peers.1

In the same way, with my friends, I never thought about age or hierarchy. So, when I met my wife’s friends and family, I had trouble understanding the importance. Then, when I learned about polite Japanese, I started talking too polite. Lately, I’ve learned to use more appropriate levels, but I still struggle sometimes. ;)

This Korean lesson at TTMIK does a good job of illustrating this. Click on the link and take a look. For people who are older, you have to use polite Korean or jondaenmal (존댓말), and for friends and those under you, you use banmal (반말) which is more informal. For example, my wife and I have a friend who’s Korean and she’s a bit older than us. So, I speak polite Korean with her, and call her “older sister” (nuna 누나). Since we’re close friends, she’s told me we can just use banmal, but I still over-do it sometimes. ;)

Similarly, when I learned Vietnamese, the same basic rules applied. Once you get a sense of age, it’s proper Vietnamese to address older people as “uncle”, “older brother”, etc. Vietnamese has different words for “uncle”: bác if they are older than your parents and chú or dì if they are younger. You had to call yourself cháu (means “nephew”) and such. When I first learned Vietnamese, I learned only tôi (“I”), not cháu, so my Vietnamese sounded too formal and distant. That’s OK in some settings, but once you get to know someone, it makes more sense to just use kinship terms. During my last weeks in Vietnam, I started to get the hang of this, and my Vietnamese started to improve because I could engage in conversation more readily. But using kinship terms, it can show respect, but also friendliness too.

Anyway, with Japanese, I started as being too informal, then I became too formal to compensate. A good example is my sister-in-law. She’s very nice and friendly toward me, so we talk pretty informally, but I still call her onēsan (お姉さん) instead of her name because she’s older than my wife and I. Since we’re close and she’s not much older, I don’t have to be too polite. However with my mother and father-in-law (especially my father-in-law), I need to be more formal and polite. Again, my in-laws are very nice and patient with me (and happy that I am trying), it’s not that strict, but I still prefer to make a good effort.

Similarly with my wife’s friends, there’s a friendly hierarchy. They’re all friends of course, but the younger ones talk to the older ones with slightly more respect. Also, the older ones tend to have more influence in the group. It’s all perfectly friendly, but people subconsciously know their place.

Anyhow, so the key to being social in Japanese, Korean or Vietnamese culture is to be sensitive to hierarchy and the age and rank of people around you. If someone is older or in a position of authority (e.g. boss, senior, doctor, teacher, etc), remember to treat them with more respect. The bigger the age difference, the greater the respect. With people under you, you can relax, but don’t be bossy or mean. No one likes that in any culture. ;)

P.S. I suspect Chinese is similar, but I don’t know. I’d love to hear from Chinese-native speakers about this too.

1 If you think I’m being informal, my wife and co-workers often tease me for being too polite. ;p

Posted in Japanese, Korean, Language, Vietnamese | 2 Comments

Intonation and Pitch-Accent

Posted on May 1, 2013 by

When people learn a new language, they often ignore pronunciation and intonation until it’s too late. That’s what happened with me with Japanese.

I started learning Japanese when I was 16. My neighbor had lived there for a while, and had some books. I borrowed the books and learned some basic Japanese. When I was in college, I learned Japanese formally, but the classes were lecture-style. We didn’t learn conversational Japanese, and just did a lot of passive study. So, pronunciation, intonation, etc, were not emphasized. It felt like this skit starring comedian 志村けん (Shimura Ken):

On the other hand, when I was in high-school, I studied Mandarin in school, and we spent a lot of time practicing accent and pronunciation because it’s essential for Chinese. I haven’t studied Chinese at all in almost 20 years, but I recently had a Chinese conversation and I could still speak/pronounce OK. Not great, but my “accent” sounded more Chinese, less American. I couldn’t say much, but I still pronounced it correctly even after 20 years.1

So anyway, my wife has told me before that when I speak Japanese I have a strong accent. For example, when I say the English word “important”, it sounds like imPORTant because I put stress on the second-syllable a lot.2 Ideally, you should pronounce Japanese very flat, and equal weight in each syllable. Take this example phrase: Yokohama wa samui. If each hiragana-syllable is 1 beat, it should be pronounced evenly like yo-ko-ha-ma-wa-sa-mu-i- (よ-こ-は-ま-は-さ-む-い). When I say it though, it sounds something like yo-ko-HA-ma-WA-sa-MU-i.

Anyhow, recently I’ve been listening to a series of Japanese-language podcasts about learning Korean called サランヘヨ (mentioned here). The podcasts are made by a pair of Japanese people who have been living in Korea for 15+ years, married locally and have kids. It’s interesting to see how Japanese learn Korean, compared to Westerners, because the languages are more similar.

In several lessons, the main host talks about intonation. Korean language has no stress, like Japanese, but the intonation has a kind of “back-rhythm” (lit. 裏リズム in the podcast) so it sounds like low-high-low-high-low-high, etc. In one episode, the host impersonated a Korean person speaking Japanese (not in a bad way, just a demonstration). The grammar and words were correct, but even as a Westerner like me you could definitely hear a different accent. Similarly, when Japanese speak Korean, they have to be careful to learn the right intonation or they will sound wrong.

I mention all this because when I speak Japanese (or Korean), I have to be careful of two things:

  • Stress – I have to get into a habit of speaking each syllable flat and even weight.
  • Accent/intonation – When to use flat, high tone, and when not to. I wrote an older post about it too.

The problem is that most English-language sources do not teach accent/intonation at all! I think some Western sources on Japanese/Korean are using outdated methods. Fortunately, I started using JapanesePod101.com again.3 I used it years ago, but I stopped subscribing to focus on listening to Japanese podcasts, books, etc. Anyhow, I paid for a short-term Premium subscription and asked for help in fixing my conversation. They suggested following the “Newbie Season 2″ series which focuses on accent and such.

I learned a lot from the first lesson, even though I studied Japanese for years. For example, when you say you are “American” (amerikajin) or “German” (doitsujin) and such, the standard accent is “Amerika” (or any country) has a flat, high tone, but “jin” (人) is low and flat. I never knew that! :-o No one ever explained that to me.

Anyhow, the point of this long post is: take intonation and pronunciation very seriously. It will save you a lot of problems later. If you have bad pronunciation now, invest time to fix it. You’ll thank yourself later. :)

P.S. Have a great weekend!

1 After that experience, I was kind of inspired to start learning Chinese again, but it’s a big investment of time, and I’m already busy. :p Maybe in the future.

2 Apparently, people in the South put stress on the first syllable: JU-ly, not Ju-LY which is how I pronounce it. Similarly, in Japan Tokyo dialect has different accent than Kansai dialect. The Korean-lesson podcast above mentioned that Koreans can pronounce Kansai dialect more easily than Tokyo dialect because the accents are more similar.

3 In the spirit of openness, I am a registered associate there. Clicking on the link above gives me some credit if someone subscribes.

Posted in Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Language | 4 Comments

Why Zen?

Posted on April 30, 2013 by

Wollmaus

Lately, I’ve been inspired to re-read an old book on Zen I bought in Japan. The book is bi-lingual Japanese/English, so I will post the quote in both languages:

禅は心の垢（あか）の掃除であり、心の垢のバスだというのである。例えば２、３日机の上をふかないと、知らず知らずのうちに白いほこりがたまっていることに気付くものである。私たちの心にも日々、いや刻々と様々な考えや感情が起る。つまりものごとに触れて、憎しみ、怒り、不満、嫉妬…などの思いが起こり、あるものは消えてしまい、あるものは残っていく。あまり溜まっていくと、気持ちが重くなって、掃除をしなければならなくなる。さもなければ、次第に生きる気力がなくなっていくからだ。

もちろん禅は心の掃除にとどまらない。いずれにしても確認しておきたいことは、禅は「心」を問題にしているということである。

And in English:

Zen is a way of washing away your mental impurities, a kind of bath to cleanse the mind. If you don’t clean your desk for two or three days, you’ll notice that a film of dust has accumulated on its surface. Day after day—in fact, moment after moment—all sorts of thoughts and feelings arise in our minds. In our daily interactions in life, feelings of hatred, anger, dissatisfaction, jealousy, and numerous other impulses and ideas arise in our minds, some of them fading away and others persisting. As these thoughts and feelings accumulate, we come to feel spiritually weighed down, and we need to clean ourselves. If we don’t, our vigor and dynamism will gradually diminish.

Of course, Zen is not simply a means of mental and spiritual cleansing. The point is that Zen focuses on the mind. (page 1-2)

Again, as the Buddha himself said in the Dhammapada (法句経):

183. To avoid all evil, to cultivate good, and to cleanse one’s mind — this is the teaching of the Buddhas.

For most people, they’re used to living live with a mind that is tired and weighed down by hatred, jealousy, dissatisfaction, etc. It’s like a fish in water. It never notices the water. But once you experience life without hatred, jealousy, dissatisfaction, etc, even for a short time, it’s hard to go back to your old way of life.

Posted in Buddhism, Religion, Zen | Tagged | 3 Comments