Reply to my Jamaican feedback

This is a reply to the post jamaicanlearningjapanese made for me. Since I seem to making rather long posts I’m going to try do this point form

- bad episodes at the banks/ post offices/ illegible mail/ no conversations/ police paranoia? Hearing all that both terrifies and excites me at the same time. It’s going to be interesting time for sure.

- As stated in my previous post, I withdraw a lot of my claims about your methods. I now know the difference between Heisig and AJATT. I was making comments about AJATT not having pronunciation or use but it was really Heisig I was talking about. Also you WERE getting pronunciation and use through AJATT. You separated the writing and speaking using two methods. Now that I’ve had some more experience, I fully believe this to be the smartest way. I will likely do a similar system myself. I am thinking of switching to kanji only through RTK and keep going on smart.fm only using the romanji pronunciation only.

- Great point with the linguistic jargon like “dangling modifiers”. For any of our readers, be weary if any method you are using focuses on these.

- You make a good point. The fact that you are in Japan and I in Canada is no minor difference. AJATT makes a less sense for me here and now, I might consider jumping into it once I am over there.

- I cannot take in ONLY Japanese media as well. I’ll try and think of some things to send you that I have found and liked if you’ll do the same. (although I get the vibe our music tastes may vary a bit)

- It’s funny you mention the realization of 10,000 considering that’s how the Japanese count (ie: forty ten-thousand NOT four-hundred thousand). I was just remarking that it seemed odd to me since I felt that suki should have been one of the first things to learn due to its high use, but I now realize that view is short-sighted and is in fact the harder way in the end.

- Interesting to hear you say about needing to look up words you know. It makes a lot of sense now that I have seen that kanji, even on their own, have different meanings and pronunciations than the one keyword you learn (ie: I have been told 生has 22 pronunciations and almost as many meanings). Again this was due to ignorance on my part due to lack of experience, and nothings a better teacher than experience.

- Kotoba is one of many apps making me seriously consider getting an iPhone when I am out there.

- I agree with your statement. No matter what method you use, learning Japanese is not easy. (But as I’m sure we both agree it is not impossible. Anyone can do it if they want to)

- With my homer comment I wasn’t making an argument in favour of rote memorization, only that the story seemed unnecessarily abstract. However I’ve realized two things now.

1) The more abstract, the more you remember it (like you've said).

2)It’s only too abstract to me since we are different people, with different backgrounds and different ways of thinking. I was making stories just as abstract without realizing it. The difference was that I wasn’t doing it deliberately or systematically like you were (and I would pay for this later). This became clear to me when I was studying the world “world”界 and I had a mental image of atlas holding the world on his back. I also thought using the same object in many stories would make things confusing, but instead I have found it helps you review old kanji the same time you learn new ones! If anything my un-systematic use of objects and stories is more at risk of getting confused with each other. Although you still need to make sure you don’t start using inner objects as the meaning of a kanji, it can be overcome by focus. (ie: 真truth has me thinking of a guy using a needle as a tool, threatening to stab it in an eye unless the truth is told. I need to blow the importance of truth up in my mind to make sure I keep the right meaning. It takes longer but works great for me)

- my initial argument was “why bother learning poignant or rend? Instead focus on more useful words.” But now I realize how learning a few obscure words is well worth the little time and effort considering how much they help with the other useful kanji you learn later on in the Heisig method.

- The brain is a wonderful thing. Having worked a lot in computers and tech I’ve gained a better appreciation for how much more amazing it is then most people even realize.

- 15 year olds unable to read the newspaper sounds surprising. But Heisig makes some similar points about the inefficencies in the Japanese school system which I’ll bring up next post.

hmmm... Still seems pretty long. oh well