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Veracruz, a Gulf state in Mexico.
Thanks for the warm welcome; I’m already feeling that learning kanji is way easier. @Armando, I’m in Veracruz, Veracruz, where it always feels like the sun is ten meters away.
BertCurtis: If I recall correctly, didn’t the author (at the end) say he’s developing an “update” or “new app” which will cover advanced lessons?
You know anything about this?Apparently a Human Japanese Intermediate is in the works, and will probably be out sometime this year. There is a Facebook group for Human Japanese where they post monthly updates about the development of it and they also post a lot of little culture notes and word of the day stuff, so you might be interested in following.
http://www.facebook.com/humanjapanese
Also, I’m pretty sure I remember reading that the Intermediate app would include kanji, so I am interested to see how it turns out.
I’d always thought that the first was along the lines of DANGER as it might be on a sign, and the second as somebody telling or warning that something is dangerous. If I’m wrong somebody please correct me.
One time while I was still learning English I was watching an episode of That 70′s Show, and one of the characters asked a question and I came up with a reply without really thinking about it. Turns out, it was word for word the reply that the other character gave, and I was a little stunned. I’d come up with the correct sentence structure, word use, tenses, everything, without really thinking about it. I didn’t even really know why it worked, I just knew that it sounded right.
Often when I try to test myself in the manner that you said I freeze – everything seems to go down the drain and leaves nothing for my brain to work with. I stress myself out. When this happens I just leave things and go do something else (like watch a TV show) and try to study while relaxing. Anki is great for learning vocabulary and kanji readings, but I don’t really think it is meant as a tool to help create brand new sentences from scratch. My advice would be to not stress out about it too much. Learning something as complex as a new language takes time, and you are not doing yourself any favors stressing out about it.
A good example of an exception helping me with the definition would be the kanji for right and left.
I think the “rules” are a pretty good guide. Granted there are some exceptions (there will always be exceptions) but I find that the exceptions make the readings easier to learn, so there is a silver lining. Also, if the guide isn’t enough it helps to find how a radical is written.
Here is a nifty little game that might help someone learn or study their kana:
http://learnjapanesepod.com/kana-invaders/
Basically it is a take on Space Invaders where you have to type out the kana before the ships reach the bottom of the screen.
There is a post over on tofugu.com that goes into this.
I bought it a while ago and usually pull it out when I’m waiting for something or traveling. I really like the little cultural notes as well, I found the notes on pronunciation really useful, and I like that it shows how to write the characters because that really helped me distinguish similar characters and helped me learn them faster.
Overall I think it is a good sort of beginner’s crash course. The only complaint I have is that it completely neglects kanji. At the end he reiterates that the app covers just some of the basics and that much further study is required, but I’d recommend it.
