Another quick update

Another quick update after my last post where I mentioned that I was concentrating on the grammar exericises on the Oxford site. Well, I've just finished those this week—it took me about 3 months altogether. It helps to get into a rhythm with these things, I found my rhythm was broken by trips away and stuff, which probably doubled the time it took.

Well, "still going" I guess is the message. Progress has not been earth shattering by any means, but I did take a trip to Beijing earlier this month where I found I was at least able to communicate basic things with Chinese people, and didn't have too much trouble with having my pronunciation understood, which was good.

Going to keep up with the grammar style exercises, this time probably with the Conversational 301 text book I have for the time being.

Update and new thoughts on grammar

Well, what with summer holidays and the like it's been a while since my last post, so I'm just writing this as a quick update as to what's going on.

I've got a lot of topics that I want to blog about language learning lined up, it's just that I've come to the conclusion that I'm spending too much time blogging about it and not enough time studying, so I've decided to concentrate on the study a bit for the time being.

I'm using the Oxford Chinese site that I mentioned before, and I'm really beginning to appreciate the benefit of grammar exercises. I think I had been lulled into thinking it was not necessary by some quarters of the language learning world, and this has been detrimental to my progress. Looking back at this blog, I am not sure I would support everything I wrote here or here anymore (although think balance is probably the best way forward, and certainly there is room for both techniques).

It is an atractive proposal not to have to bother with grammar, but I'm finding that studying the grammar really gives you a better understanding of the language and helps to give you a firm foundation from where to build your sentences, and this in turn helps to raise confidence.

Anyway, I'm going to try to make my way through all these exercises over the next month or two, and then perhaps scout around for some new material.

In the meantime, I'll try to find some time for a blog post or two. If you have any thoughts on the benefits of grammar study please let me know in the comments below, or of course if you have any comments on my blog or language learning in general, feel free to drop me a line...

Free online Mandarin lessons

I've been working my way through the lessons on this website for my Chinese studies:

It seems that it was set up by Oxford University—not sure how long ago, but some of the video looks pretty old.

Anyway, I thought I'd point it out as I've been enjoying working through the lessons. They're just about the right level for me, and all the dialogues attempt to have some amusing point thrown in at the end. Even if the amusing point isn't funny in itself, just the intention can raise a smile.

Another interesting point is the acting. The women that appear in every video are pretty bad at acting—it's painful in places—but they're supported manfully by a middle-aged bloke who does a good job despite the crick-inducing woodenness going on around him.

But besides the cheesy humour, and bad performances, it's useful material with some good exercises thrown in for practice after you've watched the video. Take a look.

Peacecorp language learning manual

I found the Peacecorp manual for language learning* on the internet the other day. I downloaded it and gave it a read. The manual is filled with good language learning tips, and it is clear that it has been put together by people who have been through the process. It’s not too text heavy, and is pretty practical— there's very little in the way of linguistic theory which was a relief for me.

Developing a learning plan

The manual advises identifying areas of your life where you need to use your target language and developing a language learning plan for these topics. Basically, you should identify something like “sending parcels at the post office” or, like the example they use in the manual, “chatting with other teachers during your lunch break” and prepare for this situation by preping vocab, and developing a possible dialogue that you might have in that situation. You should go over this with a native speaker, the book advises, and practice the pronunciation, register, etc. before going into the situation itself and trying out what you have learnt.

This seems like a pretty sensible way to go about things, so I thought I’d give it a go. Recently, I decided to improve my apartment with a few plants, so I needed to go to a florists to but some flowers. I prepared some vocabulary and a dialogue, (I uploaded the dialogue to lang-8 and got some feedback through that site), then I visited the florists and it seemed to go pretty well. I got to use a few new words and managed to buy myself a nice Chinese Bellflower for my veranda.

Chinese Bellflower:the fruits of language learning

Anyway, I think this is a good tactic. What other areas should you prepare for when you are learning a foreign language? Here’s a list of 5 topics that I think should be top of any language learner’s list:

1. Getting a haircut
A personal one this. I’m not a big fan of getting my haircut, in any language, and I put off going to a proper barber for years in Japan because of this and wrote about it here. But worth the effort, and barbers / hairdressers are great for language practice!

2. Asking for directions
When you’re living abroad, you’re going to get lost sooner or later. (The first time I went to China it took me about 20 minutes. It only took me another 5 minutes or so to find out that your average shopkeeper in Beijing speaks no English whatsoever!) Essential!

3. Asking where stuff is in a supermarket.
This one is another personal one. I’ve a tendency not to ask for help until I’ve exhausted every possible aisle and nook and cranny of the supermarket. Would probably have saved myself a lot of time if I’d just worked out how to ask in the first place. Took me much longer than it should have.

4. Ordering in a restaurant
Pretty obvious and always a favourite of beginner textbooks. But we’ve all gotta eat. This one will get a lot of use. It’s very easy to pick up food ordering language when you live where your target language is spoken, but I think it’s a good idea to cover it anyway, just to make sure you’re getting it right and the waiter isn’t just nodding politely at your dodgy language skills.

5. Telling your favorite story / joke
I’m not a big fan of people who bring prepared stories to the dinner table to be honest, but I don’t think it can hurt to think about a couple of stories that you’ve told in the past and think about how you might go about telling those in a foreign language— you could look up the vocabulary at least I guess.


So to sum up, I think this manual is pretty interesting. The only problem for me is is that it's clearly written for people who have a lot more time to devote to their studies than me. It is time consuming to put these learning plans into action, and is not something I can see myself doing on a regular basis (unless I can get into the habit I suppose).

How about you? When or Where do you think you need to set up a learning plan for? Have you done this kind of thing before?

*I've lost the link for this unfortunately, but I can email the pdf to anyone who's interested in getting it. Just leave a comment below. Or send a direct message to my twitter account.

Surprising Kanji

(手=hand + 洗=wash) = toilet

Every now and again I come across a word that is usually written in hiragana or katakana displayed in Kanji. Sometimes the kanji used are quite surprising. Here are some examples:

美味しい /  おいしい / oishii / tastes good

A word so common on Japanese TV, you only have to flick through a couple of channels and you are bound to here it. Often translated as 'tasty' or 'delicious' leading to odd sounding conversations with Japanese people in English about food. おいしい is most commonly written using hiragana, but occasionally is displayed in Kanji. These two Kanji are 実 beauty, and 味 taste— makes sense if you think about it I guess.

Another example is　上手い / うまい / umai / skillful, good at

Now I learnt 上手　じょうず　jyouzu a long time ago, and I knew the kanji for じょうず was up (上) and hand (手). Up-hand "good at something" seems to make sense. Later on I ran into the more casual うまい  which also means good, or skillful, but it wasn't until recently that I found out that うまい was transcribed as 上手い using kanji, because it's not so common to see it written like this— I guess the reason being that it's easy to get it confused with じょうず　上手.

お洒落  /  おしゃれ  /  Oshare  /  smart, flashy, fashionable, stylish.

Again, I often saw this in hiragana on TV, but only recently found out the Kanji: 洒: wash or sprinkle, 落: fall, drop, come down お洒落 sprinkle, come down = fashionable, stylish, I can make that connection.

面白い /  おもしろい  /   omoshiroi  /  interesting; funny

I was pretty embarrassed when I couldn't read this kanji after having studied Japanese for about two years, seeing as it's one of the most common words in the language! But I guess I'd just never come across it in kanji form before. 面: face, features, surface 白: white. White surface = interesting. Hmm, I guess if you're being sarcastic perhaps.

This is what I really like about kanji. The way you can connect the meaning of characters to make various connotations. Great fun, beats the Roman alphabet hands down. — (下手　へた　下: down 手: hand, down hand = rubbish, not skillful)

Another step in the right direction

Today I have another "first" I want to share. I’ve used this blog before to chart firsts, and I think it’s important to do this to keep track of my progress.

Recently, I’ve come to realise that in my 5 years in Japan my language progress has been disappointingly slow. This is due to a number of reasons I guess, and I don’t really want to go into them here, but I think I realise the mistakes I’ve been making now which is the main thing, and correcting those mistakes, although difficult, is important, otherwise I will never reach my goal.

Hopefully the "first" I have to report today will illustrate my attempts to do that.

Today's "first" is my first business related conversation at work in Japanese. My department is English speaking, I speak English with most of my close colleagues on a day-to-day business and in meetings etc. which is fine, but most of the Japanese staff on other departments expect to communicate with me in English too. This is comfortable for me, and is something that has probably gone on too long—ideally I would have been speaking Japanese, or at least attempting to, the entire time I have been there.

I have been doing this job for 3 years now, and to now begin speaking Japanese to people seems like rather a large step. It’s kind of feels like the first time is always going to be the hardest, I'm going to do it and everybody's going to be like "What the hell are you doing Neil?" A barrier between myself and using Japanese at work has formed over the past three years.

Over the past couple of months or so I’ve been trying to overcome this barrier. For example I’ve been speaking about my Japanese studies more with people. And I’ve been using idioms. How have I been using idioms? you might wonder seeing as I don’t speak any Japanese at work. Well, I‘ve been talking about Japanese idioms and using them to try and raise a laugh.

I’m not sure how this first came about, but recently it’s kind of become a bit of a joke on the department that I want to use random Japanese idioms in meetings etc. And I have. Just for a laugh. This is helping me to break down that barrier that I believe has been constructed, one that clearly I must have constructed myself, but nevertheless one that I feel is there.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, this week my boss introduced me to a Japanese associate of the company. He’s not so hot at English, so she asked me, kind of jokingly, to speak Japanese. And, lo and behold, I had a chat with him in Japanese about the work we needed him to do for us. I think my boss was a little surprised, but she laughed. And it all seemed to go pretty well.

So that’s another first. Not a great leap, but a step in the right direction I guess. In the future, whenever I enter a situation where it is possible to use a foreign language, I am going to make it clear that I want to early on, no matter how bad my skills are, just to stop this barrier appearing.

If I stick to the impudent child method I spoke about then nobody is going to mind. Using humour is a great way to overcome these boundaries, whether it’s talking about funny idioms, or making example sentences about something ridiculous like Pandas again and again—something I do in my Chinese lessons—if people are laughing it’s difficult to feel uncomfortable.

Grammar focus

Recently, I've been beginning to notice the importance of focus in study. I think it's important to keep yourself focused on a certain point or structure for a period at a time in order to learn efficiently.

In the past, I've been in a hurry to learn, and when I think to myself, "I must study some Japanese tonight" or something like that my inclination is to take on the whole language, as if I'm going to be able to devour the whole thing in one sitting.

This may sound unrealistic, and of course it is, but I think this is my subconscious telling me I've started learning too late, or I'm not going to be living here forever, and I need to get a move on if I'm going to succeed.

Anyway, in recent months I've begun to notice the benefit of remaining focused on a certain point for a period of time—mainly thanks to the fact that I now have a good teacher who isn't allowing me to talk and talk making wildly inaccurate sentences as some of my past teachers have been willing to do (but perhaps this is a topic for another post).

So recently, we have been focussing on the てくださる、ていただく、てくれる、てもらう、constructions. I have been learning Japanese for nearly five years now, and of course I have come across this construction before. But I have never given it enough time or thought to truly master its usage. Now I realise what a big mistake that was. I've been spending a lot of time on this recently and now feel pretty confident using these combinations and it's like massive new areas of Japanese have been opened up to me, and I find it hard to believe I went for so long without really getting to know it well enough.

My approach in the past has always been to hope that this kind of structure would sink in eventually, I guess through a combination of time and exposure. Of course, this takes a) time, and b) you need a lot of exposure, two things that I have complained about lacking in the past. My reasons for thinking like this can probably be put down to laziness on my part, and having teachers who were not strict enough with me.

Anyway, I think it's important to really spend some time trying to get to know a structure or language point like this to get the benefits sooner rather than later.

I think one of the benefits of  focusing on one point over a period of time like this is that it becomes something that you begin to go over in your head when you don't have your books in front of you. This is great "free extra study" that you don't even have to put any energy into. It just starts to go round your head as you're doing the dishes or something like that.

So recently, I've been trying to put this into practice with my Chinese. With my teacher we are currently going over directional complements,  like 进去 - go in, 下来 - come down; and completion complements like 修好 - fix (good), and 买到 - bought. Already I can tell that this part of the language is going to be coming up a lot in Chinese, and I think my past approach would be to hope that it sinks in at some point. I think this is possible, but now my thinking is that to become proficient and familiar with these structures as soon as possible is the better way to go.

Pronunciation reminder

Had a reminder this week about my pronunciation problems. I wrote about this ages ago, and how inportant it was, and then promptly completely forgot about it for a year or so.

It seems that when it comes to Japanese I can kid myself that the pronunciation is so simple (at least compared to Chinese) that I don't need to think about it. Not so!

I've also mentioned before that when you really try to speak as if you are a native speaker, almost mimicking the native speakers I guess, success seems to become easier to come by.  Tonight I was concentrating on doing this in my Chinese language exchange, and I could see my Chinese partner's positive reactions to what I was saying.

10 minutes later however my concentration had slipped, and I was back pronuncing words with a British drawl. My language partner's face had dropped, I could see the pain in her eyes.

Goddamnit! It's bloody hard work learning these foreign tongues. There's so much more to it than learning new words and grammar. You really have to live and breathe the language. You have to mold your mouth around the thing again and again to achieve a modicum of success.

This may sound a little defeatist, but the challenge is not motivation for me. Just technique and opportunity. I need to work on both.

Getting more opportunities to speak: a trip to the barbers

I've been bemoaning of late my lack of opportunities to use Japanese in daily life. This might sound kind of strange seeing as I live in Tokyo, but I don't actually have a circle of Japanese friends that I can meet with regularly and chat away in Japanese with. I do have Japanese friends, but I tend to hang out with them one at a time, and this means we often use English, a) because I get tired of trying to speak Japanese quickly, and b) because more often than not, my friend's English is usually better than my Japanese.

I think it's important to find a group of friends to hang out with because then the conversation naturally tends to be Japanese, and it also means you don't have to be supplying 50% of the input.

Anyway, that's besides the point of today's post. My lack of opportunities for natural conversation emphasised the importance to me of the more manufactured experiences that you can make for yourself like the one that I had yesterday and I want to mention here.

Since coming to Japan I've tended to shy away from using the old style barbers you see dotted around town. I think this may have something to with the fact that when I first arrived here I remember naively walking into one of these barbers expecting at least some basic English ability from the proprietor and suddenly realising that I had to put my measly two-to-three weeks of beginner level Japanese study into immediate effect. This wasn't overly successful if I remember correctly, and may have left a bit of a mental scar.

Anyway, since then I've mainly been using the 1000yen - 10 minute - barbers you find in most train stations around Tokyo. It's quick and simple and doesn't require a lot of communication. Yesterday however I went to an old-style barber close to where I teach in Tokyo for a change, (my last 10 minute haircut was a bit of a disaster prompting me to take the plunge) and I realised I've been missing out on a great opportunity for some Japanese conversational workout these past few years.

The barber was a very friendly older lady— in her 60s I'd say. I asked for a short-back-and-sides, we negotiated over the length of the clippers, and she got down to work. After a few minutes of silence I dived in and asked her how long that particular barber shop had been open. That was all I had to do: we didn't stop talking for the next 40-odd minutes (Well, if I'm honest she did most of the talking, but I got a few questions in, and offered a few opinions on this and that—the Royal Wedding for example). The haircut cost 3000 yen and it took 50 minutes longer than at the station shop, but as far as getting a language workout it was time and money well spent—the haircut wasn't bad either.

Barbers are a bit like taxi drivers I think, wherever you go in the world, they like to chat. So I think I'll be avoiding the 10-minute "fast-cut" barbers from now on, and take advantage of these barbers who despite costing a bit more have time for a good old-fashioned chinwag.

Why children learn languages faster than adults: my two cents

When reading literature on language learning, and talking to language learners, again and again you hear the refrain "children learn languages a lot faster than adults."

I've read a lot of theories as to why this is, and I think the most convincing for me is that children have less fear of making mistakes than adults.

I often get daunted by Japanese. I hear something, a construction or idiom, and it daunts me to think I've been learning for five years, but haven't come across that phrase yet. I begin to wonder, how many of these unknown phrases are there out there? And how incredibly long will it take me to come across them all?

So I got to thinking about how a kid overcomes these problems: what makes them so immune from this? Why doesn't a child get daunted when it hears its parents, or the television, babbling away in unrecognisable jargon?

The conclusion I reached was that children clearly just don't care. They couldn't give a monkey's elbow about what the two adults in the corner of the room are babbling on about, because it's not important for them. It doesn't relate to their world. A child will not bother to try to understand a phrase or idiom they don't understand because it's not aimed at them, and it's not necessary for them to understand.

The people children speak to, their friends, parents, or teachers, don't speak to them using adult language, they don't use the sort of language that they would find going above their head.

I think this is what makes it easier for a child to learn a language, they are at the right age to speak the basics of a language and they don't need anything else. They are able to gradually build their vocabulary and knowledge of the language as their social needs require.

As an adult language learner I should be doing the same.

Of course this raises it's own difficulties in that I have to restrict myself to childish conversations in the beginning stages of my learning. As adults we often find ourselves in social situations that require a certain amount of maturity in conversation, and when you enter into a conversation as a beginner language learner this is pretty hard to do to say the least.

The temptation is, therefore, to try to learn language early on that you would like to use in an 'adult' conversation. This is something I've mentioned before as being one of my biggest failings as a language learner: the temptation to get ahead of myself in my impatience to reach fluency.

This results in me often finding myself in awkward positions where I am trying to say something that I don't have the linguistic skill to do, which results in a silence and the social awkwardness that this entails. Confidence is then affected, and loss of confidence is the worst thing that can happen for a language learner.

So I guess, my point is, speak like a child when starting out in a language, and don't be ashamed of it. The more confidently you use childish language the quicker you will begin to make progress and begin to sound like an adult. If this means you have to restrict the number of occasions you are able to speak the language in the beginning stages then so be it—although I don't think there is anything wrong in making basic sentences in an adult setting, just be sure to do it with the kind of swagger of someone who is comfortable with the fact that they are a beginner and not someone who is trying to feign knowledge of a language they don't have: be like the impudent child who isn't afraid to speak up when the adults are having a discussion.

Trying to remove ambiguity from the meaning of words

Following up on yesterday's post.

I've just noticed another example of this dislocation between word and meaning. I'm watching politicians on TV and they keep using the  word 地域（ちいき／Chiiki）: area, or region.

I can't disassociate this word with the English word 'cheeky'. They sound very similar—so similar that everytime I hear 地域 I immediately think about the word cheeky, and secretly snigger to myself about the similarity. Of course I remember that 地域 means region (using the cheeky similarity was a good mnemonic to remember the word in the first place), but it doesn't produce the same initial reaction in me that it would to a native speaker of Japanese, and therefore inhibits my understanding of the language. (Japanese speaker thinks 'region'; I think 'sounds like cheeky, snicker.'

Trying to focus on the real meaning of the word when I hear it would help to overcome this, but I think the best way to make the connection permenant is to have real, meaningful experience using the word.

For example, recently there have been a lot of problems in Japan due to the earthquake and tsunami, and I have learnt a lot of new words. There is no ambiguity for me in these words—放射線 means radiation, there's no doubt in my mind. It's a word that creates the same reaction in me as the English version: concern. This is because I've had real, meaningful experience with this word and the consequences it can cause.

I think this is a good example of the difficulty in learning new words. New words start off as a noise with no meaning; you can then learn the meaning and make the association, but does it really become meaningful to you until you actually have a reason to use, or think about the word, that actually affects you directly?

A horrible sentence should be a horrible sentence in any language

I get the impression that I’m doing something wrong. I think there’s a quicker way. Nothing to do with study technique, but more to do with the way I’m thinking about the foreign language.

I feel there’s a shortcut. A better way to remember. A better way to retain the information—to somehow connect word and meaning faster and more permanently.

Take a sentence like this:

你把钥匙放在哪儿了？

In Chinese this sentence is an exotic thing to me. I’m in awe of it in a way. The use of 把 to indicate the direct object is something I can’t comprehend yet. The Chinese characters are both complex and beautiful (one of the main reasons I am interested in the Chinese and Japanese languages) and the sentence is something that is pleasing to the ear.

In English, on the other hand:

Where did you put the keys?

Oh God! What a horrible sentence. Could it be more mundane and everyday? A sentence that can only irritate, or cause frustration. “Oh, crap, somebody wants the keys. Now I have to remember where I put the damn things—I can never remember where I put the damn keys!! I might have to look around for them for a while, they must be lost if he/she’s asking for them. Crap!”

The words ‘exotic’, ‘awe’, ‘complex’, ‘beauty’, ‘interest’, and ‘pleasing’, are clearly words not springing to mind when I hear this sentence in English. So perhaps this is where I am going wrong. This is where my brain is taking me away from the reality of the situation.

你把钥匙放在哪儿了？should also fill me with dread. This is also a sentence to be feared: a sentence to strike fear into the heart.

This must be the shortcut to connect the meaning with the language (something I’m sure all those linguists go on about). This is the shortcut I need to start taking more often.

Note to self: must stop appreciating the beauty and sound of foreign sentences and Chinese characters and start taking note of the unpleasant consequences they can cause.

The language of earthquakes and disaster

"けっこう揺れてるね。Kekko yureterune"

This is a sentence I've heard quite a lot over the past few weeks. Roughly translated as "It's shaking quite a bit isn't it."

It's now over a month since the day when the Great Tohoku Earthquake hit Japan, but the effects of that day will continue for some time. One of the more noticable effects here in Tokyo are the continuing aftershocks.

Coming from the UK I had never experienced an earthquake before arriving in Japan five years ago. The UK seems to be ideally positioned, somewhere in the middle of a large, relitively stable, tectonic plate. Every 5 years or so you would hear a story about some minor eathquake hitting a small town somewhere, but these were pretty rare and freakish. Certainly, nobody I knew had ever expereinced one in the UK.

Over the past month I've often thought what a disaster on this scale would be like in the UK. How would the British people, government and emergency services deal with something like this? The only reasonable answer I can come up with would be to say that they certainly wouldn't deal with it as well as the Japanese.

One interesting point for me, being interested in languages, is all the new words and phrases I've come across in the past month. Listening to Japanese people talk about earthquakes has got me thinking how in the UK, not only do we not have the technology or knowhow to deal with something like this, we also don't have the vocabulary.

Here are a selection of words that I've become familiar with over the past month.

"地震 Jishin": Earthquake. In English we have 'earthquake': earthquakes are pretty common around the world, so it's not surprising that English has it's own word for this. But next we have: "震災 Shinsai" This translates as earthquake disaster, not a terribly common term in English. I guess in the UK, a disaster is a disaster, we don't have special words for different types of disaster, because we just don't have enough of them. In Japan this disaster is called "東日本大震災 Higashi Nihon Dai Shinsai" The Great Earthquake Disaster of East Japan.

The classic word that has crossed over from Japanese to English of course is "津波 tsunami". Sushi is from Japan, so is tsunami!

The Japanese method for measuring earthquakes is different from the rest of the world. In Europe we use the Richter Scale, measuring earthquake magnitude from 0 to 10. In Japan, they have a scale from 1 to 7 which, more relevantly for people living here, marks the violence of the shaking experienced in different areas during an earthquake. So in Tokyo on March 11th we experienced "震度５Shindo Go" Shaking intensity of 5. (pretty scary I might add). In the past few days however, people in the Tohoku region have been experiencing aftershocks ("余震 Yoshin") of "震度６Shindo Roku"! There is also "弱 Jyaku": weak, and "強 Kyou": strong, that are sometimes added to these measurements. I think these are upper and lower measurements for each level, so a "震度６弱 Shindo roku jyaku" is stronger than a "震度５強 Shindo go kyou".

Here are two words that really nobody wants to have to be distinguishing between "横揺れ Yokoyure" swaying from side to side, and "縦揺れ tateyure" vertical shaking, pitching. Both used to describe the type of movement experienced during an earthquake.

After such a devastating earthquake and tsunami the destuction left behind is unimaginable. In Japanese they have "被災地 Hisaichi" I think disaster zone is a good translation of this. "被災 Hisai" just means suffer from disaster, and "地 Chi" is a suffix for place or area. You also have "被災者 Hisaisha" The people affected by the disaster, many of whom have become "避難者 Hinansha" Evacuees, and are now living in "避難所 Hinansho" Evacuee shelters.

Listening to the way Japanese people talk about earthquakes gives a good indication of how much of an integral part of life it is here. This familiarity gives them a great advantage when dealing with this kind of emergency. I think this is reflected in their measured reaction to the events of the past month. In the UK, if something like this were to happen, we would have to find a whole new set of vocabulary to deal with it, and I think this would add to the difficulties.

Checking out the cherry blossoms trees in Tokyo

Today I went for a walk in Tokyo and took some photos of the Cherry Blossom trees in full bloom. Take a look at the photos below.

目黒 Meguro

根津 Nezu

根津 Nezu

東京大学 Tokyo University

目黒川 Meguro River

目黒川 Meguro River

Getting the gist from the start

After my Chinese lesson this morning, my teacher and I exchanged a couple of emails. I told her that I thought I had improved—thanks to her—and I was enjoying my lessons. She agreed that I had improved, which was pleasing, and wanted to know if she was speaking too fast for me, and whether I wanted her to slow down a bit from time to time. I've been thinking over my reply this afternoon.

There are times when I'm listening to my teacher speak that it feels like I'm just being bombarded with a succesion of strange sounding Chinese noises which seem completely devoid of meaning. This can certainly feel a little daunting, and even depressing—'how the hell I'm I ever going to get a grasp of this language', kind of feeling. But other times I find myself being able to understand most of what she is saying, and I'm able to distinguish just the individual words that I don't understand.

The conclusion I've come to is is that it is very important to be 100% tuned in as soon as she starts speaking and make sure that I'm listening carefully to the first few words of what is said. I find that if I don't do this, the sentence just becomes a blur, because I find myself fishing in the dark for meaning later on in the sentence.

Chinese has a lot of similar sounding characters—often only distinguishable by the different tones being used—for example: 急 jí second tone，既 jì fourth tone, and 几 jǐ third tone. When these sounds are part of a longer, familiar set of words (or phrase) distinguishing which one is which is is not much of a problem. If you remove the context of the sentence however, and start trying to distinguish between these sounds on their own, at least at the beginner level, it becomes a monumental task, and a few words that you already know can sound incomprehensible.

An example sentence might be:

钱都花了，要去银行
qiándōuhuāle, yàoqùyínháng
All the money's gone, I have to go to the bank.

This is a fairly simple  sentence, and shouldn't pose any problems, but I find that if I miss the first couple of words, I get lost and I'm grasping at the later sounds to try and work out what is going on.

My train of thought might go something like this:

Ooo, Chinese, wait... hualeyaoqu... hm, leyaoquyin...not... Oh.... she's finished. What was that? Crap, now she's waiting for a response. err.... 请你再说一遍。(Please say it again.)

On the other hand, if I'm prepped, ready and waiting, it might go something like this:

qiandou... ah.. all the money... huale, has been spent... oh... missed a bit... yinhang, ah, bank. OK, so, she's spent all her money and needs to go to the bank. Hmm, 哪儿是一家银行。(There's a bank.)

Of course, given time, once you become more advanced, I'm sure this becomes less of a problem, and it becomes easier and easier to pick up the gist halfway through a sentence—like you do in your fist language, I guess. But for now it means that I have to be on my best listening behaviour all the time, to make sure I'm not just sat there listening to a barrage of Chinese noises.

Ideas for journal entries

Been getting back into language studying after the past couple of weeks of craziness here in Tokyo. It was pretty hard to concentrate on other things while you have half your mind on the next aftershock, and the other half on the latest radiation readings in the area.

Anyhow, I'm starting to get back into the swing of things now, and I've been using Lang8 again a bit more recently. I seem to go through input and output phases, (I tend to output more in the way of writing rather than speaking at the moment, which I need to work on) and now I seem to have gone into output mode again by writing on my Lang8 blog.

The challenge with writing a daily journal is finding something to write about. I don't think my life is dull, but I don't seem to have the motivation to write about the ins and outs of daily life (again, I should probably work on this).

One tool I have been using to generate ideas however is the stumbleupon.com website. This website enables you to "stumble" almost randomly around the internet to find sites that other people have labeled as interesting. I say almost randomly, because the sites you do actually stumble through are regulated by your settings page where you can specify what your interests are, and thereby only stumble onto sites that are related to these interests. I find this site gives me some good ideas for journal entries on Lang8.

Writing this though I realise I should try to work on writing (and speaking) about more mundane day-to-day topics: as these are the kind of topics and language that I probably need to be more familiar with on a daily basis.

OK, that's my goal for this evening. One Lang8 entry about my day today. Hope it's not too dull!!

Tweet log: 9 March, 2011 - 16 March 2011

A collection of my tweets from the 9th March to 16th March 2011 (starting from the bottom 9th March's fore-shock—main earthquake and tsunami happened on the 11th). One viewpoint from Tokyo, Japan.

easterngrean ニール

At the moment it feels like a decision between the news and the official line. Which is more trustworthy? We need a middle road.
16 Mar

»


easterngrean ニール
@
@tokyotimes It's ridiculous. I don't know why that newspaper is still allowed to operate.
16 Mar

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easterngrean ニール

Never been so happy to see one of those annoying Japanese game shows on TV.. could cut down on the earthquake alarm like bleeping noises tho
16 Mar

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easterngrean ニール

Sitting at work. Jolly well looking forward to the weekend to be honest.
16 Mar

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easterngrean ニール

Quake last night was a real window rattler. Put the wind up me a bit. Following developments on the internet this morning. Off to work soon.
16 Mar

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easterngrean ニール

Finally worked out how to use list/search function. Now just have to find out what it's called
16 Mar

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easterngrean ニール

test tweet #test
16 Mar

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Crof Crawford Kilian
by easterngrean

A useful perspective on the Japanese earthquake http://bit.ly/hYw2Ih #jpquake
16 Mar

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easterngrean ニール

I have to say, I was undecided about twitter until this week. I absolutely love it now!!
15 Mar

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shioyama The blogger fka 塩
by easterngrean

Doesn't get more poignant than that: Sympathy From Bamiyan to the People of Japan: http://bit.ly/ibj0nv
15 Mar

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gakuranman Michael Gakuran
by easterngrean

全力を挙げる means to use all of one's energy / to the best of one's efforts. Edano uses it over and over again in his speeches.
15 Mar

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easterngrean ニール

edano is saying radiation drops. Why are all these tweets coming through so alarmist!!
15 Mar

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easterngrean ニール

edano brings some good news
15 Mar

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easterngrean ニール

I think my Dunkirk spirit just kicked in!
15 Mar

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easterngrean ニール

brilliant! jiayou means ganbatte! message from Sichuan earthquake survivors to people of Japan http://bit.ly/eIE5V9
15 Mar

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gadyepstein Gady Epstein
by easterngrean

RT @wolfgroupasia: China reaches out to Japan: A Tudou video to Japan from Sichuan's earthquake survivors: http://bit.ly/dZmWph
15 Mar

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easterngrean ニール

Just spent 2 hours uploading the wrong info onto our servers... Lucky I don't work for the electric company.
15 Mar

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gakuranman Michael Gakuran
by easterngrean

State minister Renho asking people of Japan not to buy up or horde supplies that could be used for the victims in the north (Kyodo)
15 Mar

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TOKYODANDY TOKYO DANDY (DAN)
by easterngrean

Thinking of the 50 workers on site at the Fukushima Power Plant risking their lives to bring the situation under control. THANK YOU
15 Mar

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tokyotimes Lee Chapman
by easterngrean

Can anyone help? RT @john_sir @tokyotimes any info on road conditions for going to Tokyo from #Fukushima/#Ibaraki direction?
15 Mar

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easterngrean ニール

Stroke of luck. Got the last salad on the shelf in the conbini.
15 Mar

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easterngrean ニール

Quick check of the microsee-whatever levels, and I'm off out for lunch!
15 Mar

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easterngrean ニール

Is "microsievert" trending yet?
15 Mar

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tokyotimes Lee Chapman
by easterngrean

Basically the situation is bad. But the danger is only for those in the vicinity. And sensationalist reports don't help. At all.
15 Mar

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jdierkes Julian Dierkes
by easterngrean

Nuke safety commission briefing seemed to report sound of explosion in 2nd reactor at Fukushima No 1 about two hours ago.
15 Mar

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easterngrean ニール

Another explosion?
15 Mar

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easterngrean ニール

Got a phone call from the BBC asking if I wanted to take part in an interview. Must be in a disaster zone.
15 Mar

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easterngrean ニール

My Japanese is improving though! 予断を許さない　＝　can't make any guesses
15 Mar

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easterngrean ニール

Possibly quake was closer to Tokyo. rather than being larger than other aftershocks.
15 Mar

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easterngrean ニール

Large aftershock woke me up. BBC incorrectly cites USGS for size and location. USGS is slow to update. Quake was short but sharp.
15 Mar

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easterngrean ニール

Things I wish I had: 1. A plane ticket. 2. A Geiger counter. 3. A PHd in plate tectonics. 4. A beer. Oh... I have number 4. just 1 2 & 3.
14 Mar

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easterngrean ニール

Fairly big aftershock is greeted with stony silence here in the office. Usually there would be a few comments.. but nothing.
14 Mar

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easterngrean ニール
@
@Ayumizw There are not many people here. The office is kind of quiet. All the lights are off etc.
14 Mar

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easterngrean ニール

Sitting at work. Lights are off, only about half the staff have come in today. Feels very surreal. Feel like going home to be honest.
14 Mar

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easterngrean ニール

tsunami alert "appears to have been false alarm"- BBC
14 Mar

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tokyotimes Lee Chapman
by easterngrean

RT @BiggerInJapan NEWS: Iwate pref Ofunato 5 m wave retreating, possibility of big tsunami. Move to higher grounds immediately.
14 Mar

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andyjr1975 Andrew Roper
by easterngrean

Terrifying “@scottlava: Whoa. RT @timheidecker: “@leeunkrich: This is absolutely unbelievable. ow.ly/4dvh0 #Japan #tsunami””
14 Mar

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easterngrean ニール

This page tells a story. - Earthquakes Past 7 days http://1.usa.gov/e1AmFH
14 Mar

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easterngrean ニール

More terrifying videos of the tsunami on TV.
13 Mar

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easterngrean ニール

Sorry, I shouldn't be so flippant, but it all kind of all feels hard to take in at the moment, especially with the language barrier.
13 Mar

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easterngrean ニール

I wish my Japanese was good enough to know what the spokesman from the burning nuclear power plant up the road was saying.
13 Mar

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easterngrean ニール

Sono Inglese di Gerrards Cross: Japan earthquake March 2011: my experience http://bit.ly/g8Zt2e
13 Mar

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tokyotimes Lee Chapman
by easterngrean

RT @tokyorich This by @JamesinJapan is one of the best pieces I read on life in Kanto yesterday. http://bit.ly/eF8CmC
13 Mar

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easterngrean ニール

Shocking tsunami home videos on TV—Looks like some people were either ignorant to the danger or just transfixed by what they were seeing.
13 Mar

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easterngrean ニール

Japan Earthquake - Ground shifts, water seeps during quake in Chiba, Japan youtube.com/watch?v=-LPGzz… via @youtube
13 Mar

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easterngrean ニール
@
@andyjr1975 nice
13 Mar

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easterngrean ニール
@
@andyjr1975 Great! Is that league one then? Sorry, I'm a bit behind. Argyle were staring extinction in the face last time I looked.
13 Mar

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easterngrean ニール
@
@andyjr1975 ha! Well, you know what they say. When it rains, it pours. how about the terriers?
13 Mar

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easterngrean ニール

Wow, it's 1AM. Where has today gone? Just been glued to the TV and internet watching the coverage for the past 18 hours.
13 Mar

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easterngrean ニール

Only the newscasters in Fukushima seem to be wearing hardhats now. Not sure how much good that'll do in the event of a leak, though.
13 Mar

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drockphoto Derek Montgomery
by easterngrean

It's probably not a good thing when #chernobyl is trending.
12 Mar

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easterngrean ニール

These aftershocks are really something. It's almost every few minutes or so. This shaking feeling is going to be difficult to forget.
12 Mar

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tokyotimes Lee Chapman
by easterngrean

RT @hiromichii @tokyotimes Please tweet this for English speakers who don't understand Japanese living in Japan.http://is.gd/ZzgOu6
12 Mar

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easterngrean ニール

Tokyo was shaking a lot, but everybody seems OK where I am. No injuries or damage as far as I can see.
11 Mar

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easterngrean ニール

that was pretty scary for a while there!!
11 Mar

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easterngrean ニール

http://amzn.com/k/G5X6TH9B9IXJ #Kindle
10 Mar

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zonjineko zonjineko
by easterngrean

Only In Japan: Nude toothbrushes - love the details ^_^ http://ow.ly/4aIY7
9 Mar

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easterngrean ニール

一条小消息 | Lang-8 http://lang-8.com/56453/journals/840314 #lang8
9 Mar

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easterngrean ニール

I'm going to have to update my profile to read: gives slightly scared, on the spot reports to minor earthquakes in the Tokyo region.
9 Mar

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easterngrean ニール

thought I was going to have to leave my desk... slightly disappointed now.
9 Mar

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easterngrean ニール

long, long earthquake in Tokyo, about 2 mins.
9 Mar

Reposting: Japan Earthquake: my experience

It was just another Friday afternoon at work. I was sitting at my desk, thinking about going to lunch (I'd started late, so hadn't gone yet even though it was approaching 3pm.) I was beginning to get hungry.

That was when the shaking started. I looked up at my two colleagues sitting at their desks, neither of them had moved. I began to wonder if I was imagining it (I've done this before). But the same thing (me looking up first) had happened three days previously when a large earthquake —that we now know that was a fore-shock to Friday's earthquake—caused our office to sway for about two minutes. But that's where the similarities between Wednesday's quake and Friday's end.

After a few seconds the shaking didn't abate, and in fact started to become more pronounced. My colleagues had looked up. 'Oh, another earthquake', we were all thinking at this point. But, the shaking kept getting stronger. A few more seconds and we were beginning to look around the office at others to see what they were doing. They were doing the same as us: looking around the office at others to see what they were doing. It was then that it began to dawn on me that this was different.

Then it got really serious. Everything was shaking violently. 'This was it!' I'd never gone under the table before for an earthquake (even though I'd often thought about it), but now I knew it was the best thing to do. 'Perhaps "The Big One" everyone in Tokyo fears had finally come.' Either way, I was under my desk, and I felt no shame in that. I looked around and saw that everyone else was doing the same. Desks were shaking, chairs were moving around the floor, drawers were opening and closing, I was just holding on. I checked with my two colleagues "Hey, guys, you OK?" "Yes." came the justifiably short reply. The shaking continued.

I remember looking out the window from my position under my desk. The buildings on the other side of the street were moving violently from side to side. The thing that caught my attention were the antennae on the roofs. With the sheer force of the quake they were being whipped back and forth like toys in the hand of a naughty child.

Eventually, the shaking began to calm down. People began to come out from under their desks and tentatively move about. We moved to the windows to check the situation outside. There was no damage visible, and people were beginning to exit the building.

The next question was, 'what to do next?' The building was still standing, but there were sure to be more quakes after one that size. Looking outside, (we are on the 4th floor) there were people gathering at the front of the building, but they were standing on a temporary surface, part of extensive construction work going on. One of my colleagues said that it was probably the worst place to stand. We stayed where we were.

I stayed in the building for a good 20-30 mins after the quake, until a second tremor struck. This one was not as big, but it was easily the second biggest quake I had experienced in my four and a half years in Japan, and of course, my life. Again, we were under the desks, again the shaking seemed to go on for an age.

Once this second one subsided those of us remaining in the building decided to move outside. It's difficult to know what is best in these situations. Moving outside might seem like the obvious choice, but because of the construction work going on out front, and the fact that the building had successfully withstood two tremors, staying inside also seemed logical.

Of course, at this point, none of us had any idea of the terrible events unfolding in Miyagi, Iwate, and Fukushima.

After a time standing outside we were told that we could go home. I left work, and began to head into Shibuya with a colleague. We saw crowds in-front of shop windows watching TV. We joined them and saw the shocking images. 'Are we safe here?' we were thinking. 'Will a tsunami hit Tokyo?' I'm sure I saw an image of abnormally high water levels rising under the deck of Rainbow Bridge, it looked like something from a disaster movie. (note: I have not seen this image again, was it a different bridge?)

We moved on. The scale of what was happening was difficult to gauge. Starbucks was closed, one McDonalds was closed, but another was open. I saw a building with windows shattered, and the pavement in front of the building cordoned off; a few doors down, I saw a lady shopping for shoes! What to do? How should we react to this?

We eventually found a bar with some TVs and followed the coverage: trying to take in what had gone on, and wondering how to get home. After spending an inordinate amount of time walking around, getting some food in restaurants, and looking for taxis, I eventually made it home at 8am the next morning, via bus. The aftershocks continued through the night and the next day. The earth was like the deck of a ship. Safe for now, but unstable. A feeling that will likely continue for a few weeks yet.

What I experienced will stay with me for the rest of my life, but I know that we were lucky. Those people caught in the towns on the eastern coast of the Tohoku region were perhaps like us for half-an-hour or so: Unsure of what to do next. Perhaps they decided to stay put for fear of going outside. If they had no access to TV or radio, they very likely never received the tsunami warning.

In hindsight, it's very easy to choose the best course of action, but when you are caught in the middle of something like this, it is very difficult to know what the best thing to do is. I am just thankful that everybody I know in Tokyo and Japan is safe, and my thoughts are with those people less fortunate.

What I'm reading at the moment

Just added an image I've been playing around with to the Qing Dynasty page on this blog (see right-hand column).

Recently started reading China's Last Empire: The Great Qing, by William Rowe. It's a good read, and covers a really interesting period of Chinese history. As the title of the book suggests it was a great dynasty—probably in the top five, if not the top three as far as reputations of Chinese dynasties go—but, because of the fact that it was the last imperial dynasty, and it took China through the turbulent years of modernisation that were taking place around the world at that time, it is also a very historically important dynasty.

Perhaps the most astonishing thing about it all is though, that the dynasty was not actually formed of ethnic Han, or "Chinese" people—the Manchus really didn't exist as an important factor in Chinese history right up until they took over the whole empire! The book goes so far as to suggest that their race and culture was almost an invention of political convenience to give legitimacy to the band of warriors who had taken over the empire.

Anyway, I think I might be getting out of my depth here talking about all this, so I'll stop before I say something wrong and suggest you read the book if you're interested in Chinese history like me.

Yes, I can!

I'm in a "Yes, I can do it!" mood today.

No sweat!

It's all about control. You need to have control over your learning. Get the best tools possible at your disposal: internet, texts, ipod, srs systems, teachers, whatever, and control your use of them.

A word comes up in your book, you've heard it before on your ipod: Put that track back on the ipod for tomorrow.

You're reading jokes online, you get bored: Switch to that long article about Mao Zedong you were trying to get through. Enough of that, back to the SRS.

Time is filled with learning. Control is important because control gives you confidence, and a consequence of confidence is concentration. When you are concentrating, it is much easier to take things in. You can pay attention to the material easily, and notice what is going on, making it all much easier to retain.

My new 4 step approach to language learning:

control = confidence = concentration = retention

How good is that? Do I need to take a patent out on this? What do you think?

Success

YEEEEESSSSSSSS!!!!!

HaHa! Just completed a phone call in Japanese. My first full, fault free, everyday life phone call, on my own— No Japanese friend hanging over my shoulder prompting me, no hesitation, no embarrassing English help from the person on the other end of the phone. YES! I CANCELLED MY GAS CONTRACT OVER THE PHONE IN JAPANESE!!! And I'm pretty chuffed about it.

Next step. Ordering Pizza!!!!!

Language learning is a swimming pool not a path

What I want to tell you in this post is perhaps the most important thing I have learned about language learning since I started studying Japanese.

When I began learning Japanese five years ago I was a true beginner, not only to Japanese, but to language learning. Back then, I think I viewed learning a language rather like a path. It was something you had to make your way down until you got to the other end where you would achieve fluency. I viewed studying a language as a series of points on a line, which needed to be checked off before I could move on to the next point. “Seen that piece of grammer? Yes. Great! What’s the next piece on the ladder of difficulty?” Before I knew it, I was studying from intermediate books! Sure, I hadn’t really had any lengthy or in-depth conversations with anyone yet, but I knew the word for “government” and, and I’d seen all the beginner level grammar at least once, so... On to the next stage!”

Basically, my thinking was linear. I had to make my way down the path going past check points ticking things off. I thought I was on the fast track to Fluencydom!

The trouble with this approach however, was that I found I was beginning to get bogged down. Annoyingly, the intermediate texts were still full of the beginner grammar and vocab that I’d seen, but hadn’t really spent the time mastering, and I had to kind of re-learn it every time I came across it. This was a real pain in the arse, and made studying the actual intermediate level stuff really hard. "Why do they keep putting this beginner stuff in? I don't want to have to look at that again!" kind of thing. Disillusionment soon set in, and my “percieved” progress ground to a halt.

I’m not sure actually how I’ve reached the place where I am now, but with the help of the internet for ideas, (great sites like AJATT, LingQ, Lang 8 etc.), and blind, stubborn refusal to give up, I’ve been able to make some progress and alter my approach to studying languages.

I think the biggest thing I’ve learned is that learning a language is not a path—and I’m going to stretch the analogy usage here a little—it’s a swimming pool. Yes, a swimming pool! Only, when you begin to study the language, the pool is empty. You have to fill it up, and what you have to do is start filling it up with lots and lots of sentences. Easy ones to begin with— because as everybody knows you can’t put difficult sentences into an empty swimming pool— and keep putting those easy sentences into the pool, until the the pool seems ready for slightly more difficult ones. And then, again, you need to add lots and lots of the slightly more difficult sentences to the pool before your you’ll start to see the water level rise.

I guess my point is that learning a language is nothing like solving a maths problem, or fixing a car, or walking down a path for that matter, it’s not really like any of those subjects that you learn at school that require you to get from A to B. It’s not linear, it’s voluminal (Can I say that?) You need the volume, not the checkpoints. Yes, it’s a long and gradual process to achieve the volume required to move onto the next stage, but it’s a process that is actually quite easy, and relatively painless once you know how to go about it and dedicate the time to doing it. Tiny, tiny baby steps, repeating over and over again what you know, slowly adding to this pool of knowledge that you are building up.

This conclusion is something that I’ve only really arrived at relatively recently, but as far as my Chinese study is going it is great. I can feel real progress when I talk to my Chinese teacher, and studying is painless and enjoyable because I know what I have to do, and I’m not pushing myself too hard. If only someone had told me this 10 years ago!

Using kid's jokes

Recently I’ve started using children’s jokes to study. When it comes to language studying, especially for lowish level people like me, jokes have a number of things going for them as far as I can see:

1. They are short.

2. They contain lots and lots of dialogues and useful everyday language.

3. They usually hold your attention to the end because you are waiting for the punchline.

4. You never get tired of jokes—even bad jokes are good if you know what I mean.


Here is an example of an amusing, bad joke I’ve just uploaded and studied in LingQ—complete with my dodgy translation:


谁是孩子的父亲？
Who is the child’s father?

迈克是学校的勤杂工。
Mike is the school’s handyman.

有一天正坐在家中，突然一只足球破窗而 入，打在他身上，
One day, when he was sitting at home, all of a sudden a football smashed through his window and hit him.

一个小男孩满头大汗跑进来，说：“sorry，我马上打电话叫爸爸来给你修。”
A small boy ran in with sweat pouring from his brow saying “Sorry, I’ll phone my dad immediately and get him to come and fix it.”

一小时以后，果然来了个大个子男人，
An hour later, as expected, a large man came.

手脚利索地把玻璃装好，
With nimble hands he fixed the window quickly

随后向史克要10美元材料费和工钱。
Then asked for 10 dollars for material costs and labour fee.

迈克惊异地说：“你难道不是孩子的父亲？”
Mike said with amazement, “Could it be you are not the boy’s father?”

来人也惊奇地说：“你难道不是孩子的父亲？”
To which the man also with amazement replied, “Could it be you are not the boy’s father?”

It’s a kids joke: it’s cheesy and old, but I like it. There’s plenty of useful language in there, and I wasn’t sure of the punchline until the end, so my attention was held—unlike a lot of language learning material you come across. (although I'm not sure why Mike has to be a handyman, when it's his window being fixed. Maybe I've missed something in the translation here?)

This is where I’ve been getting some Chinese kid’s jokes from, and I've been uploading them into LingQ and saving the vocab in there. If anybody knows of any other good resources it'd be good to hear about them.

Consuming sentences more important than memorizing sentences

I tried for a long time to try and reproduce sentences I had memorized as language practice. This was a slow and painful process. A lot of time was spent digging around in my mind trying to find the clue that would allow me to remember the sentence. Looking back, I think this was a complete waste of time.

Now I just try to consume as many sentences as possible. I just see them, comprehend them, and let them sink in without worrying about being able to reproduce them. It’s easier and more fun that way, and the stress and discouragement that I felt from trying, and often failing, to reproduce sentences has gone. In the past, this kind of discouragement would perhaps have made me down books for a week or two, surely a much more damaging result that just letting a sentence go past without trying to memorize it! I think the thought of having to push myself through this memorization process was enough to make me think twice before picking up my textbooks during those times.

Now I'm banking on the fact that there are only a finite number of sentence patterns in a language, so enough exposure must surely result in mastery of enough of these patterns to achieve a certain level of fluency eventually.

I think this is clearly the case for vocab too. I remember my word list: a sheet of A4 paper that I used to create (by hand) everyday, containing ten to twenty Japanese words with example sentences. I would carry it around with me in my pocket and try to memorize the words every time I had a spare second. I remember there were words like 法律 (law) and 期限 (time frame) and countless others that I can't remember now because they clearly weren't relevant to my everyday life.

Useful, relevant words will crop up again and again, providing you are putting in enough hours in contact with the target language to allow this to happen, and I think in order to put in enough hours, you have to try to avoid discouraging things like sentence memorization.

Using Google images

Yesterday I had a lesson in Chinese about ordering in a restaurant. I'll be honest, I'm a complete dunce when it comes to food. Even in English I have trouble describing dishes and tastes, so trying to do it in Chinese is an Everest sized task for me. Anyway, I left the class with a list of Chinese food stuffs on my sheet of paper and as I sat down to go over the vocabulary today I was struck by a great idea: Google images!

Check it out. Just punch the word into google and you get the perfect idea of what you're looking up.

From the top we have:

粽子 zong4zi: a rice ball in a leaf

春卷 chun1juan3: spring rolls

馒头 man2tou: steamed bun

羊肉串 yang2rou4chuan4: lamb kebabs

粥 zhou1: congee

在香港我吃了真好吃的粥！