Ticking off all the Japanese grammar points with an N2/N1 grammar book

 I have an N2 & N1 grammar book that I'm working through and very near the end of.

I like the book because there is no English in it, and it is very simple - Grammar structure + 3-5 example sentences, about 10 structures per chapter, followed by 30-odd multiple choice, fill-the-gap sentence questions to test comprehension. My ex had scored herself on these questions, so I need to keep a sheet over the options so as not to know the answer, which makes it a bit harder because I can't see the options and have to try to guess which of the 10 structures goes in the gap and how it is conjugated etc.

Despite having the book for over 10 years, I only really starting going through it about 1 year ago. I decided it was time to finally at least "see" all the grammar structures in Japanese up to N1 level. I felt that if I could at least say to myself that I had seen them all, then it might give me more confidence.

I'm almost at the end - 2 N1 chapters left to go - and I feel like that need has been met. Basically, when I am listening to native level Japanese now, I don't have a nagging fear in the back of my mind that if only I had studied all the grammar, I would be able to understand.

Does this mean I understand the native-level Japanese fully? - Absolutely not!! But I feel like I can just focus on new vocabulary and phrases that I don't understand now - of which there are still many.

The more I study, the more I realise that I need to study more. Haha. Is this a virtuous circle?!

Trying Japanese dramas with Amazon Prime

I have subscribed to Amazon Prime and taken a monthly subscription to NHK On Demand. I used to have a television, and used to really like watching the documentaries on NHK. NHK Special makes some really good programming. Even if I could only understand 50%, I could still follow the gist of the programme, and the production quality made it enjoyable. Of course, it also helped improve my Japanese.

I don't have a TV anymore, so I decided to subscribe to the NHK on demand through Amazon. It's not too expensive at maybe 2-3000 yen per month.

The other day, I thought I'd branch out and try some Japanese dramas. I have dipped my toes in the Japanese drama world previously, always to be disappointed.

I was browsing the many dramas on prime and this one caught my eye - not sure why - but I thought let's give this a go.
 

The opening scene of the 1st episode of the 1st series, has the lady who I presume is the heroine of the series, marching along a coutry path in-between rice fields wearing high-heels and a short skirt. She seems to be in a hurry. We then cut to a horse race meeting. She has bought a ticket and is seems very excitable as she waits in the stand for the race to start. The other people in the stand also seem very focused on the upcoming race and excitable - I could only conclude that this race was of great importance - despite the small crowd. 

The race starts and the lady screams and shouts like her life depends on the outcome of the race; however, on the final straight her horse throws it's rider to the ground. Cue tearing up of bet ticket and much hysteria. Oh, I forgot to mention, during this the scene cuts to a youngish businessman and older lady sat in one of the corporate boxes. There seems to be something serious going on between them. The lady perhaps is blackmailing him. 

Anyway, cut back to the race and the heroine storms from the stand after her colleague - who happened to be next to her - and arrives at the scene of the rider of the horse being stretchered to an arriving ambulance. Out of the ambulance jumps a young doctor who seems slightly out-of-place riding in the ambulance itself - as if in his country hospital this was the first time the ambulance had ever been called out and he was determined to be there for the moment. He runs to the car park and begins immediately treating the injured jockey. At this point, of course, the heroine recognizes him, he her, and they have an hysterical conversation in the car park - he has now forgotten about the jockey. Until the jockey starts coughing up blood. 

Enough! I had to stop. I don't know what to call this type of drama. It's sort of hysterical-fantasy-realism. Perhaps the idea is to recreate manga with real actors, but it is not really my cup of tea, so I will be sticking with the documentaries for now.

Still going...

Never give up. That should be the motto of all language learners.

It's been over 5 years since my last post. A lot has happened in my life during that time, some good, some (a lot) not so good. But I still have my goals and language learning is one of them.

I passed the JLPT level 2 in 2012. I just sneaked past the pass level of something like 60%. Anyway, this year I have decided to try and take it again... 8 years later!

Back then I think I was in a rush to get Japanese under my belt and move on, so I was cutting a lot of corners. I had passed 2, so I could move on to 1. When, in reality, I still had a lot of work to do on the level 2 grammar and vocabulary.

I've realised that now that I am back tackling this level 2 stuff. I've signed up to an online level 2 course through Udemy. Recorded video lessons going through all the grammar points. I like this method, because it's like attending class, but you can do it at your own pace, and can rewind the teacher easily if you aren't paying attention (not so easy in a real life class). Plus it's cheaper! :)

Here is the level 2 course.

Slave to the flashcards

I fear I may have become too much of a slave to my flashcards. It`s now three years since I began regularly updating my vocabulary from the Tangorin website into my Anki flashcards. I`m absolutely positive that this has increased my vocabulary substantially, but I wonder if I have relied too much on this and neglected other areas that also need work in learning a foreign language. It`s as if the flashcards have become a distraction, they can lull you into the sense that you are progressing more than you really are.

In order to keep the number of cards in my decks at a manageable level I have been deleting them when they get to around the three month mark. This has enabled me to keep the number of cards ticking over, may have had a detrimental effect on my long term retention of some of the less common words. I`ve begun to notice this anyhow.

I`m also frustrated with my lack of progress with fluency. I was hoping that by now I would be a confident speaker in my workplace, or with Japanese speakers in my life, but this is far from the case. I feel I need to take a different tack to break new ground.

I`m currently taking three lessons a week, so I don`t think this is the problem. More likely that I need to use, or engineer situations where I can use, the language more frequently in my day to day life.

Vocab drive

I'm on a drive to learn as much vocabulary as possible.

The longer I study Japanese, the more the enormity of the task becomes apparent to me, and therefore the more time I end up committing to it.

On recent consideration of how slow my progress was becoming I decided to start watching as much TV as possible. My self-satisfaction at being able to work out what the plotline of a particular drama was was soon tempered by the realization that over 50% of the vocabulary is still unknown to me. Hence the vocab drive.

Using the Anki flashcards and the tangorin dictionary website I've set up a system where every new word I come across is saved into tangorin, and then example sentences uploaded to anki at the end of the month. I'm then able to review the vocab over the next couple of months on my phone.

I've actually been using this system for over a year now, and I'm starting to see some good results. It's a good feeling when a word you have recently been learning crops up on TV and your understanding of that word opens up a whole new area of meaning to the conversation that you're listening to. It's like an extra light being turned on in a badly lit room.

JLPT level 2 and new website

Been a while since I updated this blog, and there are a couple of things to report. Firstly, I passed the JLPT level 2! Yippee for me. I was actually a little surprised by this as I was only taking the test to see what it was like thinking I might be in a position to pass next year. Anyway, it turns out you only need t o get over 50% to pass because the test has become more difficult, which is exactly what I did, just. Anyway, a pass is a pass, and I'm pleased with it.

The other news is to report on a new site I've been using to study Japanese. Actually, this isn't a specific study site, it's a news site. It's called FNN News, and they have a lot of short video clips uploaded on their site, and the good thing is that they have the script printed below the video. This is priceless, because trying to catch the meaning of the video without the script is very difficult, but with the script you can, with the help of a trusty dictionary, make out the meaning of what the clip is about. My method is to watch the clip through once, then to read the script, looking up any words I don't know, then to watch the video again while reading the script, and to finally watch the video one more time without reading. By the final time I find that I'm able to understand what is being said, and I start to think about other things, e.g. the character of the people talking, or the reason for this news story, as if I were watching the clip in English. It's good stuff. Thanks to my teacher, Taka Sensei, for introducing this site to me.

Reading a book in Japanese

Despite my last post about how difficult it is to get to a level where you can read a book in Japanese, I've been going for it lately. I've been reading a book written by a Japanese lady who went to China to teach Japanese for a year. It is an account of her time there. This book is good for me because the subject matter is both familiar and interesting to me: I have travelled abroad to teach, and I'm interested in China and have visited on a few occasions.

I'm finding that I'm able to understand around 90% of the book most of the time. The odd word or two I don't understand, but from context it's often quite easy to imagine what it could be. On occasions there are passages which are more difficult, and my understanding becomes a bit more clouded, but I find it's best just to plough through these sections and wait for the clouds to clear, rather than diving to the dictionary every time, which can be distracting and frustrating.

Anyway, hopefully the more I read, the easier and less cloudy it will become.

New iPhone

One thing that has a good effect on my language learning of late has been my new iPhone. It's my first smartphone and I've had it for a couple of months now. I downloaded the Anki app which has really enabled my flashcard usage to go up dramatically. It's great being able to check your flashcards for one minute or so while you are waiting for the train, or waiting at the pedestrian crossing or whatever. I'd say my use of flashcards has gone up by at least 100% if not a lot more.

家政婦の三田 on pps.tv

Another app that is useful is pps.tv. It's an app for a Chinese website where you can access all sorts of TV shows, movies etc. There is a Japanese drama category and I've been trying to watch a drama series from start to finish. There are subtitles in Chinese and Japanese! On the whole, I keep my eyes on the Japanese subs, and manage to follow what's going on quite well. From time to time though, I take a look at the Chinese subs too and get a bit of study in that way too.

The drama I've been watching is, like a lot of Japanese dramas, wacky as hell. It's called 家政婦の三田 (Kaseifu no Mita; Mita the housekeeper) and it's about a housekeeper who is working in the home of a bereaved family who have lost their mother/wife. The wacky thing is the housekeeper behaves like a housekeeping robot behaving and working perfectly, beyond belief, so much so that she actually creeps people out. It's wacky, but interesting to watch, and I'm looking forward to finding out why the woman/robot is as wacky as she is.

I held out from purchasing an iPhone for quite a while, but I've got to say it's a good purchase.

Explaining skills

Went to my Chinese language class this morning. The teacher didn't turn up, (second time this month that has happened) but not to worry I had a good chat with the other students using Japanese.

Rida san introduced the history of Japan on the blackboard, and then I had a go at introducing a breif history of the UK. Parts of my explanation were in Japanese, parts in English.

There are some grammatical structures that I need to get more used to using to make things easier to explain. I'm sure there are structures, such as the multiple uses of ように, that I know, but haven't yet mastered when and how to use properly. If I spend some time on them, my ability to explain in the language would improve a lot.

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?

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.

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!!!!!

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.

Music

I still remain to be convinced of the benefits of using music to learn a foreign language. I've been playing a couple of Chinese language tunes that I like on my ipod for a couple of weeks now, but the lyrics are not really sinking in.

I guess I need to study them harder or something, but making out the lyrics on songs was never my strong point anyway. I tend to be more interested in the tune when I'm listening to a song, and very often don't pick up on the lyrics.

Two of my favourite bands are Massive Attack and Radiohead. And I've listened to their albums for years without really knowing the lyrics that well. I think their songs really speak to you through the music itself.

Anyhow, from the point of view of picking up vocabulary, and increasing your ability to speak the language, I don't think music is that useful. One thing I will say for it though is it does give you a topic of conversation to use with native speakers.

Living in Japan, I've come to like a couple of Japanese artists. One of my favourites is Angela Aki. I think she's got a great voice. I don't think she's the kind of artist most people expect a thirty-something British guy like me to come out and say they like, so it's always surprising to people when I bring up her name. It makes for good conversation anyway.

If your interested, this is probably my favourite of her songs 孤独のカケラ — translates as fragment of solitude.