Question words and Moving

I'm going to be moving to Idaho soon, so with this blog post I'm beginning to fall behind, as I've been so busy...

Today at iKnow I got a little done - nothing special.

The new-ish words were:

駅 - eki - railway station
おいしい(oishii) - tasty
大きい - ookii - big
男 - otoko - man,male
大人 - otona - adult

I picked a few good ones out of the sentences, though.
野球 - yakyuu - baseball
昼過ぎ - hirusugi - lunch
バラ - rose

要る and 空く (iru and suku) are the two that I've had trouble with of late.
The first is "to need/require", and the latter is "to be empty".
They're so short they feel generic and are hard to assign a way to be remembered

Today I've seen a lot of question/object words, and I need them sorted out.
So I'll make a list.

誰 - dare - who
何 - nan(i) - what
どこ (doko) - where
いつ (itsu) - when
どうして (doushite) - why

ここ (koko) - here
そこ (soko) - there
あそこ (asoko) - over there

この (kono) - this
その (sono) - that

Caught up on iKnow at Smart.fm

Today I did the usual 10 w/ 2 new, then one with 3 new... then an all 10 new!
The all-ten-new ones are harder usually... but this one had a lot I've just done myself.

First off ,there was:
高校生 - koukousei - High School student
上手 - jouzu - good, skilled

Then:
強い - strong - tsuyoi
七 - nana - seven (alternate 7 pronunciation)
they covered 二十日 / hatsuka / 20 days, surprisingly.

The two ones I had trouble with were:
触る - touch,feel - sawaru
痛い - pain - itai

The ten new were mostly numbers and family members.
Curious? See Numbers#1, Numbers#2, and Family.
The few truly new ones are:
暖かい - atatakai - warm
有る - aru - exist,possess
良い(いい)- good - often just in kana
上 - ue - up,above
動く - ugoku - move

I picked out two words from sentences:
誕生日 - tanjoubi - birthday
桃 - momo - peach

"Happy Birthday" is 誕生日、おめでとう。(tanjoubi, omedetou)

For you who are interested in this, but not particularly 私の日本語, it's pronounced
(tawn-joe-bee, oh-med-et-ohh).

My sentences for today are:
banana ga nanahon arimasu.
バナナ が 七本 あります。
(There are 7 bananas)
I love saying this fast... lol... there aren't spaces in 日本語.

The other was had wind in it (kaze)
kyou wa kaze tsuyoi.
今日は風が強い。
(the wind is strong today)

I'm getting better at understanding the sentences without the translations... yay.


和
(peace.)

Recognition... and More Numbers

Today at iKnow I covered a few interesting words. I'm at 33%! a third of the way...

酸っぱい - suppai - sour
細い - hosoi - thin,slender,narrow
違う - chigau - wrong, different

I've never handled right/wrong before... now I have "wrong".
I wonder what "correct/right" is... maybe I heard it and forgot...
I reviewed つける(tsukeru) - "switch on" today... I also know 消す-kesu-"switch off".

I got two non-vocab words out of the sentences I picked out:
葡萄/ぶどう(budou) - grape(s)
美味しい - oishii - delicious

Hmm... bet I could make a sentence for practice...
この ぶどう が 美味しい です。
kono budou ga oishii desu.
these grapes are delicious.

There were two I keep screwing up on...
渇く - kawaku - to be thirsty (can't seem to remember)
ミーティング - mi-teingu - meeting (pain in the butt to spell)

I forgot about the # of things words last post... they're: (1-10)
一つ - hitotsu
二つ - futatsu
三つ - mittsu
四つ - yottsu
五つ - itsutsu
六つ - muttsu
七つ - nanatsu
八つ - yattsu
九つ - kokonotsu
十 - too
I think the numbers afterward are plain 訓読み ones, juuichi, juuni, juusan, etc.


Also on a last note, I had brand-new sentence I understood before I first saw the translation:
カップ を 三つ 買いました。
cappu o mittsu kaimashita.
I bought three cups.

I'm getting better! I might try to find some serious reading material...

More Family Member Forms

Today at iKnow I covered another of the o___san words.
I believe it's the last.
I looked for more and there aren't any i want missing.
So...

Informal/plain:
兄 - ani - older brother
姉 - ane - older sister
弟 - otouto - younger brother
妹 - imouto - younger sister
母 - haha - mother
父 - chichi - father

Formal, Respectful:
お兄さん - oniisan - older brother
お姉さん - oneesan - older sister
お母さん - okaasan - mother
お父さん - otousan - father

Seems clear to me, if I got it right.

Today's interesting words:
そば - soba - side, vicinity ( a noun equivalent of 'near')

よう - way, like, kind (like "kind of", sorta, rather, etc. I think)

閉じる - tojiru - to close (another one!, tho a review... this is close a book)
閉める - shimeru - to close (this is to close a door)
締める - shimeru - this is to fasten, tighten (like a seatbelt)

辛い - karai - spicy, salty
三日- mikka - three days, third of month
来る - kuru - come

前 - mae - front, before ('前で/mae de' is 'in front of')

Here's a little one I picked out of a sentence... I'm sure of it.
りんご(ringo) - apple
Guess I ought to go learn my fruit... That's for later...

peace!

Homophones and Kanji... Yuck

Today I sat down at iKnow... it still wanted me to do 40... so I did.

I've got this nightmarish conundrum I'm trying to sort out.
If I'm saying them correctly...

締める - shimeru - tighten, fasten
閉める - shimeru - close
閉まる - shimaru - be closed
開く - hiraku - open

They're all so similar it's hard to come up with ways to memorize! ugh...

I've also got
きれい(kirei) - clean, pretty
嫌い - kirai - hated, disliked

single vowel differences are a pain for me.
You'd think it'd be easier... like clean v. clone in English... but nope.

Two notable things I learned...
六日 - muika - 6 days, 6th of month
六つ - muttsu - six (things)
I need to learn the whole list of these...

I learned this too.
晴れる - hareru - to be sunny(weather)
It's easy, because it sounds close to "haru", which is 春, spring (season


I've been a little slow at responding to answers... I need to work on focusing better.

My other interesting misc were:
直る - naoru - be repaired, return to normal
お姉さん - older sister (another form... i need to go look up lists and differences. I think this is formal)
辺 - hen - vicinity, area, part
易しい - yasashii - easy, simple


The sentence I'm studying for the day is this:
私はパンよりご飯が好きだ。
I prefer rice over bread (or the other way around, i can't remember)
I'm trying to figure out how comparisons work.

iKnow I'm Falling Behind...

Well, iknow yelled at me tonight for falling behind - it wanted me to do like, 50 of them!
Fat chance. It's late and i've got to get to bed.
I did 30, and only two words in each were new, some of them dumb numbers/weekdays still.

Today I will forbear a list, as there's little new anyway.

Here's the interesting stuff.

こっち(kocchi) - here
(i need to look up the "there" equivalent...)

開く - hiraku - open

つける(tsukuru) - switch on (to go with kesu- 消す - switch off !)

乾く - kawaku - be thirsty
二つ - futatsu - two things

Here's some I pulled from the example sentences.
The first was from "God, spirit" and other was from "why"
信じる - shinjiru - to believe/trust/have faith (in) (religious word)
泣く - naku - to cry
Tomar v. Tomaru
I have a language confusion I'm trying to sort out.
In español, to take, consume (like medicine) is "tomar"
In 日本語, to stay (overnight) (i.e. in a hotel) is "tomaru"

It makes memorizing 泊まる (tomaru) a pain.

Going on to Grade 2... And Multitasking

Actually, I have two cases of multitasking.
One happened, and the other is a long term plan.

Tonight I watched TV for a few hours, and during that time I had my 日本語 out on my lap.

I decided to write out the grade 2 kanji. It's helped me tremendously already.
As laborious as writing them can be, it allows me to see them in my mind.

That's necessary if I'm ever going to be able to write Japanese - also, it improves recognition dramatically.

The second case is my long-term plan. I plan to sit down and work at Smart.fm / iKnow as weel as writing. After I get done with grade 2, I'll probably write the iKnow vocab Kanji.

My vocabulary should begin to increase considerably.
That's provided I don't give up and slack off...

If you're curious, I just did the first 16.
They're:

引く - hi(ku) - (to) pull, draw
羽 - ha; hane - counter for birds&rabbits; wing, blade, feather
雲 - cumo - cloud
園 - en,sono - suffix for place, farm, garden, park
遠い - too(i) - far, distant
何 - nan, nani - what
科 - ka - dept., section, family (taxonomy)
夏 - natsu - summer
家 -　ie/uchi - house/home
歌う - uta(u) -(to) sing
画 - kaku - stroke, element (of art, kanji, etc)
回 - kai - occurences, innings(baseball)
会う - a(u) - (to) meet
海 - umi - sea,beach
絵 - e - picture, drawing, painting, sketch
外 - soto - outside

Finishing iKnow Backup

I've been meaning to go over some stuff I covered the 12th at smart.fm/iKnow.
It was the last time I put real work in.

Those of you with short attention spans can skip ahead to the highlights.
I like to put this list down for my own sake.

大好き - daisuki - loved (adj)
晴れる - hareru - to be sunny, clear up
汚い - kitanai - dirty
空く - suku - be empty
上る - noboru - to go up
髪の毛 - kaminoke - hair
茶色 - chairo - light brown
ご飯 - gohan - rice
つける - tsukeru - switch on
日 - nichi - day

月曜日 - getsuyoubi - Monday
今週 - konshuu - this week
開く - hiraku - to open
あれ - are - that(over there)
二 - ni - two
閉まる - shimaru - shut, be closed
締める - shimeru - fasten, tighten
水 - mizu - water
入る - hairu - enter
片仮名 - katakana

まずい - mazui - bad tasting, bad
ひらがな - hiragana
曇る - kumoru - become cloudy
触る - sawaru - touch, feel
駄目 - dame - no good
書き直す - kakinaosu - rewrite
飲み物 - nomimono - drink, beverage
木曜日 - mokuyoubi - thursday
曜日 - youbi - day of week
そば - soba - side, vicinity



Okay, now that's out of the way...

The Highlights

Things I take note of:

days of the week = cliché. See Here if you really gotta know.
Numbers = also cliché. See Here for numbers.

I did see the connection that:
taberu = to eat, tabemono=food
nomu= to drink, nomimono=beverage

So what's "mono" mean? I went and found out, of course.
物 - mono - thing, object

So now we know 食べ物 = "food thing", and 飲み物 = "drink thing".
Huh.

Aside a lot of basic words that day, I spotted:

汚い - kitanai - dirty
まずい (mazui) - bad-tasting, bad

髪の毛 - kaminoke - hair(on head)
and this 毛 for hair, coat, covering looks TOO MUCH like 手 for hand.
Poo. Oh well... I'll get over it.

Smart.fm History 1 - Meals

I haven't spoken much about the stuff I've done at iKnow.
I do work there.
I need to get back more recently, but the 10th and 12th I was actually there getting things done.

Here's what I pulled from that day's practice and learning.

For those less interested, skip to the end, the more interesting part.


土曜日 - doyoubi - Saturday
金曜日 - kinyoubi - Friday

神 - kami - god, spirit (important in scripture!)

晩 - ban - evening, night

お父さん - otousan - father (i know お母さん - okaasan - mother, too)

太い - futoi - thick, fat
痛い - itai - painful
多分 - tabun - probably
時計 - tokei - clock, watch
どうして - doushit - why
掛ける - kakeru - hang, put on
曲がる - magaru - turn
泊まる - tomaru - stay overnight

おなか - onaka - stomach
閉める - shimeru - close, shut
嫌い - kirai - dislike
要る - iru - need, require
無い - nai - to not be
黄色い - kiiroi - yellow (a color!)
風邪 - kaze - cold (illness) (kaze means wind, too)
優しい - yasashii - gentle, kindhearted
ミーティング - mi-teingu - meeting (an english steal, obviously)


the interesting part

There are three (well, four) words I've picked up that apparently are used for meal words.
朝 - asa - morning
昼 - hiru - afternoon
晩 - ban - evening (same one seen today)
ご飯 - gohan - rice

Add them and you get:

朝ご飯 - asagohan - breakfast
昼ご飯 - hirugohan - lunch
晩ご飯 - bangohan - dinner

I guess all they eat is rice... lol...

Finally Finished!!! (With My Writing Practice)

I've got to stop writing these so late at night. Also, I need to actually go to my blog and post them... I'm falling way behind...

Anyway, I finished with my Kanji writing and I'm going to do some examination on what I've learned. I can't write all of them a million times each... there's literally thousands of them. It would take years at this rate.

I need to learn what I've learned, such that I can improve my overall, rather than each individually. maybe there's a place online with guidelines for determining the stroke order or something.

I am going to re-write them beneath a place where I wrote them all beforehand. That way, I'll be able to compare how much I've improved.

I may start writing Grade 2 ones, but there's twice as many. (exactly... 80 vs. 160)
So... yeah. I don't know. It'll be a lot of work. I really need to get back to iKnow/Smart.fm.

Next time I might post some stuff I've written down that I learned there recently.

Smart.fm Habits and Writing the Kanji

Lately I've had trouble with Smart.fm/iKnow always wanting to be down. They have issues to work out - having moved their servers from Japan to San Fran in a day, and I'm not mad... still - it makes it hard to maintain my habit of practice when I don't know when I'll be able to.

Today had a ridiculous amount of review.
All that was new was 2 each time. I covered these:
始まる - hajimaru - to begin
食べ物 - tabemono - food
ゲーム (ge-mu) - game
十 - juu - 10
天気 - tenki - weather
暑い - atsui - hot, warm

Desperate for for new material, I identified these along the way.
かゆい (kayui) - itchy
海 - umi - sea, beach
窓 - mado - window
ビデオゲーム (bideoge-mu) videogame
近所 - kinjo - neighborhood
皿 - sara - plate, dish

Hopefully next time I'll see more new.

These are the 80 Grade one Kanji I've been working on writing. I've done the first four columns so far. I'm writing them repetitively kindergarten-style. I've seen marked improvement in my ability to see them in my head - recognizing and reproducing are two different things.
I'm learning to "write" better now!
You can find the meanings in my First 80 Kanji Post.

Credit for these goes to http://www.learn-japanese.info/

iKnow Is Now A Part Of Smart.fm

Today sucks. iKnow is GONE.
By gone I mean they removed the iKnow website.
iKnow was a learning application that the iKnow site provided. Now it's Smart.fm.
The iKnow application is still there, but iKnow's website that held my items in progress, etc. appears to be gone. I had to create a new username for Smart.fm.
the iKnow address redirects to Smart.fm now.
well... it's not all bad.
I'll just move on to the Part 2 of the Core 2000 series I had been in.

The review over section 1 was getting old, anyways.


Today I worked some, but the site keeps going up and down, so I am not sure it saved...

Here's what I have to cope with for now:
時 - toki - time
閉じる - tojiru - close
切る - kiru - to cut
米 - kome - rice
線 - sen - line
決まる - kimaru - to be decided (I know i've used this kanji somewhere before... hmm...)
楽しい - tanoshii - fun, enjoyable
服 - fuku - clothes
後ろ - ushiro - back, behind
嬉しい - happy, glad

日曜日 - Nichiyoubi - Sunday (redundant... i know this)
開ける - akeru - to open, unlock (scarily close to makeru-to lose)
腰 - koshi - hip, lower back
昼 - hiru - daytime, midday
お母さん - okaasan - mother (huh... a form i didn't know)
留学生 - ryuugakusei - student studying abroad (i.e. foreign exchange student)
大学生 - daigakusei - college student (thought i did this... must remember 大学校 (college))
終わり - owari - end, conclusion (the noun form of owaru-to end I suppose)
背 - se - height
手伝う - tetsudau - help, assist

鼻- hana - nose
起きる - okiru - to occur (this is from last time! I knew 大学生 looked familiar!)
熱い - atsui - hot (something actually useful... finally.)
載せる - noseru - to place, put on (apparently you can use either kanji - 載 or 乗 )
悲しい - kanashii - sad
愛する - aisuru - to love, care for (i already know this kanji)
近く - chikaku - vicinity, nearby (another I already knew)
しゃべる(shaberu) - to chat, talk (doesn't have a kanji, oddly)
甘い - amai - sweet (food)
テーブル (teeburu) - table (an English steal)

now I have to deal with English homophones... close/clothes... lol...
well, they're not really homophones, but close enough to be disorienting.
Oh, and "sen" is also 千 - 1000. So yeah, homophones, anyone?

Anyone watch Naruto? Enough to know the character Gaara? The kanji on his forehead is love.


愛

And now for some naughty/immature humor just because I can:
彼女 は お母さん が 熱い です。
kanojo wa okaasan ga atsui desu.
ever heard that weird/dumb song stacy's mom? lol...

well... I can say more things now with my better vocab... like
昨日 私 は 新しい 服 が 買いました。
kinou watashi wa atarashii fuku ga kaimashita.
Yesterday I bought new clothes.

Well... lets keep the vocab rolling I guess... lol... I hope iKnow or Smart.fm or whatever saved my work.

iKnow is going down... and Kanji Grade 2

I need to get on iKnow more... It's supposed to go down for a while for renovation around Wednesday.

I haven't got too much done today.

You'd think I would, as it's Sunday, but I really haven't been up to anything, really.
It's falling back and I've been doing more of photoshop.

I'll get practice in, though. I can't stop just because I have less interest than usual.

I think I'll work on finishing up the Grade 2 jouyou kanji.
There's 160 of them, as opposed to the 80 I listed (in The First 80 Kanji)

I think I have like, 75% of them or somewhere about there to where I recognize them. I need to get to work in that area, though. That way I can move on to better things.

I might list them in a few days... and add the post to my Japanese Resource site.

It takes time to put such an enormous list together, though. I have to have the kanji, kana/romaji, onyomi and kunyomi together in a chart I code myself... it's rather tedious.

I also need to sit down to paper an pen and draw the kanji over and over. That should help my ability to recognize and/or reproduce them considerably.

iKnow it's Getting Old... Animals!

Today I did more at iKnow.
They waste my time with ones I've got to 100%.
My overall progress is only up to 87%. It's trickling by 2 percentages still, it seems.

Some of the (not very) interesting ones I stumbled over today were:

次 - tsugi - next
消す - kesu - to turn/switch off
The homophone,
速い/早い - hayai - fast/early
My ryhming conundrum :
病気 - byouki - illness
飛行機 - hikouki - airplane
(silly, I know - but I need to staighten these out.)

One of my random notes I made was
猿 - saru - monkey
Lol... monkey...
Hey, I just realized - I know a few animals...

猫 - neko - cat
犬 - inu - dog
鳥 - tori - bird
猿 - saru - monkey
牛 - ushi - cow
きりん(kirin) - giraffe
馬 - uma - horse
and a few I looked up:
蛇 - hebi - snake
熊 - kuma - bear
動物 - doubutsu - animal

If I missed one you'd care to know, look it up easy here.

Virtue And Review

善良 - zenriyou - virtue, goodness
This is a word I thought to look up from church Sunday.
Just something random...
there's not much new with Japanese of late... just doing reviews finishing up this first section at iKnow.

Here's a couple I've been working on getting better with...
図書館 - toshokan - library
授業 - jugyou - class, lesson
引く - hiku - draw, pull
全部 - zenbu - all, wholly (i.e. I want all of them.)
上げる - ageru - raise, improve

I knocked everything out of the park today - don't think I made a single mistake.
All of the once not completed are in the 50-99% benchmark - so it's all downhill from here.

I hope to come up with something fun to do to revive my motivation... like watching Naruto (sad, i know.)

Putting Off Today

I got my wisdom teeth out today.
I'm writing this retroactively, i.e. I wasn't conscious enough to write this today.

So unfortunately, my Japanese practice didn't get done. I'll work on it tomorrow.
I'm getting my kanji together with my vocab to see what i do and don't know still.

Back at iKnow recently, they've started giving me the last problem, where you have to spell it, twice. The first time they give me the English, like always, but now they want me to know it just looking at the kanji. It's not been so bad... yet.

It should help with my kanji recognition, I suppose. That's always a plus.

I'm to 81% with this section now. I hope to move on to number 2 soon.
I got 13 more passed off, all really old ones that beginners would know.
I think 彼女-kanojo-girl(friend) was among them. Yeah - dumb stuff.

Well, nothing else new besides that. I'm in a lot of pain right now.

The Great Kanji Matchup!!!

Tonight I did some matching of kanji from my charts.
I stopped, because I had to get to bed, but I have several marked in red that are vocab.

I haven't studied kanji in a while - vocab is more important usually, but I want to list my 180-something iKnow vocab to my charts.

I printed out new charts I'm going to find a way to hang up on my wall, and I'm using the old ones to mark what's been done.

I'm going to eventually start marking off the ones I have fully memorized on the new ones, eventually.

I need to learn to write them, too. I may get a stack of blank paper to keep and just write some of them over and over everyday.

I may just start learning to duplicate the charts!

The charts in question are Kanji grades 1,2, and 3 at Nihongo no Narau ("learn-japanese.com")

Not Much Left...

Today's iKnow sessions had all old stuff. Review is important, though.

I'm stumbling over buy/sell:
売る - uru - sell
買う - kau - buy

I get them switched sometimes...

I dealt with a rather unfavorable
変える - kaeru - to change
帰る - kaeru - return/come home ...this is the homophone I hate most.

I got 22 new ones to 100% !!! That's considering I only study 30. I probably have as little as 14/15 sessions left.
Considering I do at least 3 every time I'm on, I'll be done in week or two.

I do need to produce a chart of kanji to study - I need to learn to write them better.
Part of learning Japanese is learning to write. Reading is far easier. It takes a lot less effort to read than it does to write.

Next time is the last pre-V-Day post.
I'll have Valentine's Day phrases in a few languages, for fun. Be sure to check back after Wed. the 11 - I'll include some Spanish, French, and German, with 日本語, of course.

Repetitive Repetitiveness

Say that three times fast.

In all seriousness, today I saw something both surprising and irritating.
iKnow expects me to keep practicing the stuff I've passed off.

I didn't think it was so bad at first - it handed me:
持つ - motsu - to have
A very important one I'd "finished".
Then on the third and last block of the day I got four!:
置く - oku - to put
住む - sumu - to live(reside)
続く - tsuduku - to continue
分かる - wakaru - to understand

All of this gets kinda old. Review is nice, but there are other things I could be working on.
There were only three words marked as urgent/important...
出来る - dekiru - to be able/good at ...screwed this up a while back
引く - hiku - to pull, draw (like a door) ...a new one I was fuzzy on
寝る - neru - to sleep ...kinda new, but hah! I know this well.


In desperation for something original, I did pull a few in-sentence non-vocab ones:
靴 - kutsu - shoe
鳥 - tori - bird
意味 - imi - meaning
...and an often reoccurring
たくさん(takusan) - many, much, several, lots, etc.

Today's Hated Homophone (yay!) is "kiru".
着る - kiru - to wear
切る - kiru - to cut

I have spied enough "year" words I'm need to get them straight:
年 - toshi - year
今年 - kotoshi - this year
去年 - kyonen - last year
来年 - rainen - next year

Oh, and I found a cool and easy sentence for today:
I've been confused by early infinitive verb usage... it helped me.
私 は 絵 を 見る の が 好き です。
watashi wa e o miru no ga suki desu.
I (=t) pictures (=o) look at (=s) like to. t=topic p., s=subject p., o=object p.
I like to look at pictures

Peeking at Unit Two

At iKnow I did all my practice today.
I'm at 70%, and I have 20 completed.
I've said before, I'm finished "starting" all the words.

I started a new section, even though my first one isn't finished.
I did this just to see what lies ahead.

I'm doing the Core 2000 series, and there are 10-200 blocks.
I started "step 2" just to preview what's next, even though I'm still on the first one.

It gave me ten new ones... I really wasn't ready, but oh well.
閉じる - tojiru - to close
楽しい - pleasure, fun
時 - toki - time
米 - kome - rice
後ろ - ushiro - behind
嬉しい - ureshii - happy
切る - kiru - to cut
決まる - kimaru - to be decided
線 - sen - line
服 - fuku

The last three I'd forgotten and had to go find. I managed to remember the rest, though. That's good- it means I'm retaining most of what I'm learning.