#road to jlpt n5 in 5 months!!

[lingopotatous]

wed, july 17, 2024

learned katakana

[yue-muffin]

@mejomonster​ I was inspired by your recent post on reading levels that language learning apps/programs claim to cover vs. actually cover, since I’ve been keeping track of the difficulty of the words I encounter in Kazetsuyo. It’s ended up quite interesting, I thought you might be interested.

風が強く吹いている is not a hard novel. I’m rubbish at guessing reading levels, but if you browse the English translation you’ll see it’s not that difficult - the trickiest part would be the running-specific terminology, I suspect (seeing as I know nothing about running in english either).

So, these are the stats for the first two pages of the ebook version. I’ve left out particles, names, and loan words, but everything else is here. Now, I think it’s also important to have a look and see what is technically classified as N1 vs. N5, because the results surprised me a little. I bolded the ones I knew before looking them up (+ italicized the ones I forgot the readings of; # in parentheses are the number I didn’t know at all, or were only vaguely familiar but I couldn’t remember the meaning on the spot), and keep in mind I have never used any structure to study, I basically just read things I like and try my darnest to translate them to “study”.

N5: 30 words (0) Nothing surprising, all very common words. I won’t list them all here, as I knew them all and 椅子 and 吹くare the only two whose readings I tend to forget. Nouns: 風, 足, 椅子. Verbs: 吹く, 出る. Adjectives: 寒い, 熱い, 強い.

N4: 16 words (0) Surprisingly few of these, still basic but a few harder ones here. For example, 比べる (kuraberu) is one I’ve heard a million times but haven’t seen written down enough to remember it off the top of my head. Nouns: 小説, 天気, 線, 昼間, 日, 注意, 嘘, 湯. Verbs: 生きる, 笑う, 思う, 払う, 向かう, 比べる. Adjectives: 細かい, Other: そんな, 彼

N3: 23 words (1) Quite a lot of these actually. We are getting a few harder ones, but others I’ve seen a million times before. Nouns: 事, 分, 屋根, 瞬間, 夢中, 仲間, 限界, 土地, 故郷, 身, 料金. Verbs: 出会う, 立ち上がる, 感じる, 離れる, 繋ぐ, 流れる, 眺める. Adverbs: 再び, ほど. Others: それでも, たまらない.

N2: 8 words (3) Now we are getting a mix of things I know really well and others I have NEVER heard of. Nouns: 煙突 (chimney), 粒. Verbs: 目指す, 溢れる, 埋める, 腰掛ける. Adverbs: せっかく, 相変わらず.

N1: 13 words (5) A whopping 13 words! And it shocked me to see a few familiar faces that you see everywhere. Nouns: 天才, 個性, 青春, 挑戦, 入浴, 襟, 顎. Verbs: たどる, 浸す, 速める/早める. Adverbs: すぐ, ���ょっちゅう.

While I have gone a very long time without having encountered the word for going in the bath (入浴) or chin (顎), すぐ is ridiculously common. It means “soon” or “immediately”. And 天才 “genius” is common in stories of many sorts. Taking a step back to N2, せっかく and 相変わらず are also super common phrases. I couldn’t believe 目指す “to aim for” was that high. However, I truly had no idea what “chimney” was. I can infer based on the kanji: 煙 meaning smoke and 突 meaning pierce or thrust, but yeah, I didn’t know that one.

Others: 44 (21) There are an additional 44 words that do not appear on any of the JLPT lists. These range from things like 鶴 to 動き出す and 確かに to 首元. Some are kind of common, like apparently the months are not actually counted as JLPT words so April (四月) is on there. Others you’ll almost never see like 左官屋 (plasterer, apparently).

So what has actually happened in the story so far? We have walked down a street (not far from a major road but surprisingly quiet), entered a bathhouse (our character is a regular there), and jumped into some really hot water (literally) only to promptly get right back out. And an older guy is having a good laugh at our character.

Anyways, I thought that was an interesting experiment. It was enlightening actually looking at the JLPT lists because I’ve never seen them before. The only list I have ever actually semi-studied from was the kyouiku kanji list to get a sense of the kanji actual kids in Japan learn grade-by-grade.

[lingopotatous]

mon, july 15, 2024

first japanese session: learning & practicing hiragana!

[lingopotatous]

tue, july 16, 2024

I tried to squeeze learning katakana into my schedule today, but I just got 15 minutes >,< I need to plan my day better!

[lingopotatous]

July-Aug 10, 2024

🌸 My friend, my mentor <3

My Japanese lit graduate friend recommended some learning resources to learn Japanese. She's also willing to mentor me. How sweet :") We hung out every Saturday last month, exploring different cafes in our city, chitchatting, and then reviewing my Japanese learning progress. Unfortunately, I didn't have the chance to meet her for the last two weeks because my workload was packed. I haven't learned any Japanese either since. But I'll try to get back into my learning routine next week!

📚 Books?

She recommended I use the Minna no Nihongo book as my study guide. I also tried using some other books like the Genki series, and a JLTP-focused book in my native language. The books are pretty easy to understand. But it felt weird to learn the grammar solely from the book without knowing how it actually sounds in real life. I thought I needed to familiarize myself with the music of the language. So, I decided to explore some Japanese content on YouTube first.

🎶 The music of the language

I stumbled upon some videos about the Japanese pitch accent and how it's different from the English stress accent. Unfortunately, the only way to learn the pitch of each word is by consuming Japanese content and taking your own notes. I hope there's some kind of pitch indicators in the Japanese dictionaries, like how English dictionaries indicate which syllables need to be stressed in the pronunciation part.

⌨️ Using app & typing

I also tried using the Lingodeer app yesterday. It's been fun! I like how the lessons provided are so applicative, realistic, and interactive. To improve my learning efficiency, I also learned how to type in Japanese!

>> NEXT >>

My next missions are to enrich my vocabularies, memorize the kanji of those vocabs (if applicable), and continue learning grammar.

🎧