Oh man, exactly a month since I wrote anything here. . .I feel bad about not updating this blog more often, it always crosses my mind to write something up and I have lots of stuff I want to rant about, but I’m starting to think I’m simply more of a “doer” than a “do and write it down” or “write it down and do“. Mostly because whenever the thought comes to sit down and write up a post I end up sitting down and studying or reading something else instead. Not bad but I need to make sure this log stays up to date.
On that note, I’ve generally been keeping up with my language studies. My online morning job gives me plenty of downtime to study Korean (do Anki reps, mine for sentences, and watch/listen to some Korean stuff). I still need to do something about speaking/producing more though.
The run for 3,000 汉字 has been going well, I am about ¾ of the way through my 2nd set of 500, but sadly I don’t think I’ll hit the mark by the end of the month. I’ll try to speed up and see if I can catch up for next month’s 500.
The thing about the characters I’m learning though is that along with going down “the most common characters by frequency” list I have been simultaneously doing James Heisig’s "Remembering the Kanji 1". Since the two lists I’m using don’t overlap much in order, the number of characters I know in total may actually be 100-200+ more than what I think it is, which is great.
Ok, something that I briefly mentioned last time that I have been thinking about since I started focusing on learning Chinese characters, is going all out for the CJK. Since the day I made up the list of languages I want to learn, and put Japanese on that list, I’ve been trying to decide whether to include Japanese, into the mix of the already strongly progressing Chinese and Korean as my 3rd main-study language and wrap up the CJK (I’m pretty serious with my mains so it would be a big decision). My concerns were whether it would be too much to realistically do simultaneously and how would I study (mainly managing the characters Hanzi vs. Kanji)?
So first off, What is CJK??
CJK of course is a collective term for the legendary East Asian triumvirate of languages, that is Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. According to Wikipedia the term was originally used by prog
rammers and software manufacturers who had to deal with the difficulties of character conversion for these languages.
Nowadays, because these are the countries by far dominating Asia and Asian influence, people usually use CJK to refer to anything Asian in general. Or in the case of many C or J or K language learners, learning all three languages so you can rule. . .I mean. . . have 100% open access to the big “mover and shaker” countries in Asia.
Note: I’m referring to East-Asia when I say Asia here, of course if I meant all of literal Asia India without a doubt would be among the big “movers and shakers”
To be honest, I’ve never really had an interest nor a good relationship with the Japanese language though I was introduced to it very early. There was this fling I had with learning it when I was much younger and was introduced to anime (well before anime was popular in the U.S I might add), but when anime got wayyy too popular and Japanese suddenly became the cool Asian language to learn, let alone the number of half-hearted, “3 day monks”三日坊主(みっ・か・ぼう・ず）and anime obsessed “otaku”(おたく). . . I was completely put off from learning it.
As most of you reading this know, the reputation of Americans, around the world, in the area of 2nd languages is pretty crappy. Unfortunately, from my experience, most Japanese learners don’t do much to help this stereotype (see the type of students I mentioned above). So later, as I was studying Korean, people (Asian and non-Asian included) often tried to relate my studies as an “Asian thing” like what they saw with the vast majority of Japanese learners.
Putting off my efforts with Korean like this really got on my nerves and somehow, as an extension of its learners reputation made me almost despise Japanese as a language, the country, and even its people. Looking back, I know this was so completely idiotic in so many ways. . .but it made me try much harder to distinguish my efforts with Korean and show people what someone who actually has a passion for the language/culture they are learning can do (a good result of a negative stimulus I would say).
As I got better at Korean and became more immersed, I began noticing something. What I discovered was a number of unique relationships/influences between Korea-China and Korea-Japan that wasn’t present with the other Asian countries and seemed to hold an important role in each countries culture.
This ranges from the languages origins and similarities, to how the people follow each others fashions before any western countries while keeping they’re own individual standards and limits
(can you tell which of these pictures has typical C,J, or K fashion??. . .actually the 2 on the right are from Vietnam mimicking Jap and Kor fashion in order, and the 1st is typical Taiwanese),
to even their 3-way rivalry of whose men/women are the best in some area (while ignoring many of they’re not too distant Asian neighbors in the competition). As all of these were revealed to me, and continue to be revealed, I realized the closely intertwined relationship of the CJK countries and that if I ever planned on having a full-grasp of, traveling to, or living in any one of these countries, I may very well get caught up in the world of the other two as well.
This was verified in how I began studying Chinese. Even before I had begun, the make-up of my friends seemed to include more and more Chinese/Taiwanese natives, without any conscious effort towards this on my part. Very likely because of the “Asians hang with Asians” association. . .since I was already hanging out with many Koreans, it made it much easier for me to meet the Chinese who hung out with the Korean kids and from there many other Chinese people also. The same goes for most of the few Japanese friends I made, but for some reason this rarely included non-CJK Asians (which really just reinforces my point of the unique CJK relationship). Of course with this, my interest in studying Chinese burgeoned and I began seriously studying it in addition to Korean.
With the addition of Chinese, unique CJK relationships, especially C-K, became more evident. . . and more importantly, language wise, Chinese was helping me reinforce my Korean in leaps and bounds.
Now recently, as I’ve been progressively learning more about both China and Korea, looking for resources, and working on both languages, I continuously bump into the 3rd member of the group that I thought the least of and absolutely never expected to (re)grow an interest in. . .Japanese.
I’ve decided not to ignore the powerful draw of the CJK anymore and have put my previous feelings about Japan/ese behind me. The learners of a language (least of all those that aren’t devoted to it) don’t reflect much on the language/country/people itself and I should never really have allowed myself to think this way (the wonderful Japanese friends I’ve made and people I’ve met, were really the strong factor in melting away my Japan prejudice).
For me, the close interrelationship of these countries and their languages is something I can’t get away from, so I will be tackling the three whole heartedly beginning in April.
FYI, I had already settled my grievances with Japanese well before I started this blog, and had decided to study it sometime in the near future (as you can see it on my list in the first post) but only now have I decided to stop kidding myself and go “all in” with the CJK.
If I would be learning each anyway, learning them as a group now, in the long run seems to make more sense than learning them separately. I would be able to take full advantage of their close relationship to each other language wise, especially starting with a good foundation in the most neutral between the three, Korean; as well as take advantage of the intangible CJK symbiosis~~
For those against simultaneous language learning (even though it’s pretty clear that I‘m an advocate of simultaneous language learning), this is not really simultaneous. My Korean is well ahead of either Chinese or Japanese, and my Chinese is a good 1,000+ characters (plus numerous words and phrases) ahead of my Japanese. . .so each is already well demarcated in my head. (I don’t really suggest going simultaneous if you are a beginner, w/in your first 3-5months, of both languages you want to study).
So yea, CJK is pretty much what I am about now. The other languages on my list are most likely going to be taking it heavy on the backburner, I’ll really only look at them when I’m dying for something fresh and non-Asian, but I’m guessing that will not be a frequent occurrence.
As I already have Hiragana(ひらがな) and Katakana(カタカナ) down, my study time largely consists of character study. Although I know many characters already (in Chinese), going through the first book of RTK, I see many meanings that aren’t consistent with their Chinese equivalents (sometimes not even the real Japanese meaning either!). So my studies is comprise of an intensive comparison and study of the Hanzi(汉字) vs. Kanji(漢字) meanings and readings (pinyin or kana) using RTK1 as the base. It looks something like this:
Since there are 2,000 kanji and 3,000-4,000 hanzi to learn, this will more than likely own me for the next 3-4months or more, but I’m sure I will come out flying with both Japanese and Chinese, and more than ready to dominate the CJK~~
[More]
On that note, I’ve generally been keeping up with my language studies. My online morning job gives me plenty of downtime to study Korean (do Anki reps, mine for sentences, and watch/listen to some Korean stuff). I still need to do something about speaking/producing more though.
The run for 3,000 汉字 has been going well, I am about ¾ of the way through my 2nd set of 500, but sadly I don’t think I’ll hit the mark by the end of the month. I’ll try to speed up and see if I can catch up for next month’s 500.
The thing about the characters I’m learning though is that along with going down “the most common characters by frequency” list I have been simultaneously doing James Heisig’s "Remembering the Kanji 1". Since the two lists I’m using don’t overlap much in order, the number of characters I know in total may actually be 100-200+ more than what I think it is, which is great.
Ok, something that I briefly mentioned last time that I have been thinking about since I started focusing on learning Chinese characters, is going all out for the CJK. Since the day I made up the list of languages I want to learn, and put Japanese on that list, I’ve been trying to decide whether to include Japanese, into the mix of the already strongly progressing Chinese and Korean as my 3rd main-study language and wrap up the CJK (I’m pretty serious with my mains so it would be a big decision). My concerns were whether it would be too much to realistically do simultaneously and how would I study (mainly managing the characters Hanzi vs. Kanji)?
So first off, What is CJK??CJK of course is a collective term for the legendary East Asian triumvirate of languages, that is Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. According to Wikipedia the term was originally used by prog
rammers and software manufacturers who had to deal with the difficulties of character conversion for these languages.Nowadays, because these are the countries by far dominating Asia and Asian influence, people usually use CJK to refer to anything Asian in general. Or in the case of many C or J or K language learners, learning all three languages so you can rule. . .I mean. . . have 100% open access to the big “mover and shaker” countries in Asia.
Note: I’m referring to East-Asia when I say Asia here, of course if I meant all of literal Asia India without a doubt would be among the big “movers and shakers”
To be honest, I’ve never really had an interest nor a good relationship with the Japanese language though I was introduced to it very early. There was this fling I had with learning it when I was much younger and was introduced to anime (well before anime was popular in the U.S I might add), but when anime got wayyy too popular and Japanese suddenly became the cool Asian language to learn, let alone the number of half-hearted, “3 day monks”三日坊主(みっ・か・ぼう・ず）and anime obsessed “otaku”(おたく). . . I was completely put off from learning it.As most of you reading this know, the reputation of Americans, around the world, in the area of 2nd languages is pretty crappy. Unfortunately, from my experience, most Japanese learners don’t do much to help this stereotype (see the type of students I mentioned above). So later, as I was studying Korean, people (Asian and non-Asian included) often tried to relate my studies as an “Asian thing” like what they saw with the vast majority of Japanese learners.
Putting off my efforts with Korean like this really got on my nerves and somehow, as an extension of its learners reputation made me almost despise Japanese as a language, the country, and even its people. Looking back, I know this was so completely idiotic in so many ways. . .but it made me try much harder to distinguish my efforts with Korean and show people what someone who actually has a passion for the language/culture they are learning can do (a good result of a negative stimulus I would say).
As I got better at Korean and became more immersed, I began noticing something. What I discovered was a number of unique relationships/influences between Korea-China and Korea-Japan that wasn’t present with the other Asian countries and seemed to hold an important role in each countries culture.This ranges from the languages origins and similarities, to how the people follow each others fashions before any western countries while keeping they’re own individual standards and limits
(can you tell which of these pictures has typical C,J, or K fashion??. . .actually the 2 on the right are from Vietnam mimicking Jap and Kor fashion in order, and the 1st is typical Taiwanese),to even their 3-way rivalry of whose men/women are the best in some area (while ignoring many of they’re not too distant Asian neighbors in the competition). As all of these were revealed to me, and continue to be revealed, I realized the closely intertwined relationship of the CJK countries and that if I ever planned on having a full-grasp of, traveling to, or living in any one of these countries, I may very well get caught up in the world of the other two as well.
This was verified in how I began studying Chinese. Even before I had begun, the make-up of my friends seemed to include more and more Chinese/Taiwanese natives, without any conscious effort towards this on my part. Very likely because of the “Asians hang with Asians” association. . .since I was already hanging out with many Koreans, it made it much easier for me to meet the Chinese who hung out with the Korean kids and from there many other Chinese people also. The same goes for most of the few Japanese friends I made, but for some reason this rarely included non-CJK Asians (which really just reinforces my point of the unique CJK relationship). Of course with this, my interest in studying Chinese burgeoned and I began seriously studying it in addition to Korean.
With the addition of Chinese, unique CJK relationships, especially C-K, became more evident. . . and more importantly, language wise, Chinese was helping me reinforce my Korean in leaps and bounds.
Now recently, as I’ve been progressively learning more about both China and Korea, looking for resources, and working on both languages, I continuously bump into the 3rd member of the group that I thought the least of and absolutely never expected to (re)grow an interest in. . .Japanese.
I’ve decided not to ignore the powerful draw of the CJK anymore and have put my previous feelings about Japan/ese behind me. The learners of a language (least of all those that aren’t devoted to it) don’t reflect much on the language/country/people itself and I should never really have allowed myself to think this way (the wonderful Japanese friends I’ve made and people I’ve met, were really the strong factor in melting away my Japan prejudice).
For me, the close interrelationship of these countries and their languages is something I can’t get away from, so I will be tackling the three whole heartedly beginning in April.
FYI, I had already settled my grievances with Japanese well before I started this blog, and had decided to study it sometime in the near future (as you can see it on my list in the first post) but only now have I decided to stop kidding myself and go “all in” with the CJK.
If I would be learning each anyway, learning them as a group now, in the long run seems to make more sense than learning them separately. I would be able to take full advantage of their close relationship to each other language wise, especially starting with a good foundation in the most neutral between the three, Korean; as well as take advantage of the intangible CJK symbiosis~~
For those against simultaneous language learning (even though it’s pretty clear that I‘m an advocate of simultaneous language learning), this is not really simultaneous. My Korean is well ahead of either Chinese or Japanese, and my Chinese is a good 1,000+ characters (plus numerous words and phrases) ahead of my Japanese. . .so each is already well demarcated in my head. (I don’t really suggest going simultaneous if you are a beginner, w/in your first 3-5months, of both languages you want to study).
So yea, CJK is pretty much what I am about now. The other languages on my list are most likely going to be taking it heavy on the backburner, I’ll really only look at them when I’m dying for something fresh and non-Asian, but I’m guessing that will not be a frequent occurrence.
As I already have Hiragana(ひらがな) and Katakana(カタカナ) down, my study time largely consists of character study. Although I know many characters already (in Chinese), going through the first book of RTK, I see many meanings that aren’t consistent with their Chinese equivalents (sometimes not even the real Japanese meaning either!). So my studies is comprise of an intensive comparison and study of the Hanzi(汉字) vs. Kanji(漢字) meanings and readings (pinyin or kana) using RTK1 as the base. It looks something like this:
Chns Frq List Reference # ---> RTK Frame ----> On Reading
pinyin---------------------------------------- Kun Reading
Since there are 2,000 kanji and 3,000-4,000 hanzi to learn, this will more than likely own me for the next 3-4months or more, but I’m sure I will come out flying with both Japanese and Chinese, and more than ready to dominate the CJK~~
Ok, its been another two weeks. . .seems like 2 weeks is about the time when I start to feel the need to get off my ass and write another entry~
That should probably be changing now since I decided to get rid of my personal/life blog. I realized that my life blog wasn’t really getting any action and I didn’t feel motivated AT ALL to write in it. Also, language is my life, I wake up thinking about languages and I go to sleep thinking about languages, so of course my life pretty much revolves around them. Thus anything that goes on in my personal life would probably be just as relevant here as it would be on its own. On that note, I should be incorporating more of my thoughts on diversified topics on here and filtering them through a linguaphiles eyes/mind.
Some updates:
- Completed the first step in my goal of 500 Chinese characters per month!! Although it’s just a bit spotty (there are about 12 or so I haven’t highlighted in the first group of 500) I am certain I know more than 500 Chinese characters now, including ones that were not in the first group, that I already know. This is really exciting cuz I was able to keep up with a pretty tough and strict goal and if I can keep going at this rate, I will have around 3,000 in June which would be awesome.
-Korean is going strong as usual. . .daily Anki reps, lots of TV shows and Cyworld mining, and chatting online. . .I really need to tackle the disparity between my listening/reading comprehension and speaking abilities tho.
-Slacked off on Japanese and Hindi. Got a little busy and had to cut back on these two. . .plus I’m still not sure exactly how to approach Japanese. I had been thinking I could just do Kanji like I‘m doing Hanzi, but it seems to be a more complicated matter than that. . .I think I’ve found a book to settle this though, but we’ll see.
Anyway, all is going pretty well. . .ok, I’m gonna end here and just list some topics I want to talk about in the next couple of entries.
- Language Approaches! (Korean next)
- CJK (what is this you ask? Weeellll…you’ll find out when I write about it)
- How to make the most of your languages (you know 40+ languages. . .great. . .now what are you going to do with it??)
- Language Vlogs and audio recordings/pod cast (feeling like you sound like an idiot can be a wonderful motivator)
- Influences your L2 has on your L3 ( some interesting stuff here that I just noticed)
- “ your blog is about languages, why do I see mostly English?”. . .this is what I keep asking myself and has been making me kinda feel like a hypocrite if I don’t start writing in other scripts (at least Korean and some Chinese).
Reminder:
- one step a day. . .
[More]
That should probably be changing now since I decided to get rid of my personal/life blog. I realized that my life blog wasn’t really getting any action and I didn’t feel motivated AT ALL to write in it. Also, language is my life, I wake up thinking about languages and I go to sleep thinking about languages, so of course my life pretty much revolves around them. Thus anything that goes on in my personal life would probably be just as relevant here as it would be on its own. On that note, I should be incorporating more of my thoughts on diversified topics on here and filtering them through a linguaphiles eyes/mind.
Some updates:
- Completed the first step in my goal of 500 Chinese characters per month!! Although it’s just a bit spotty (there are about 12 or so I haven’t highlighted in the first group of 500) I am certain I know more than 500 Chinese characters now, including ones that were not in the first group, that I already know. This is really exciting cuz I was able to keep up with a pretty tough and strict goal and if I can keep going at this rate, I will have around 3,000 in June which would be awesome.
-Korean is going strong as usual. . .daily Anki reps, lots of TV shows and Cyworld mining, and chatting online. . .I really need to tackle the disparity between my listening/reading comprehension and speaking abilities tho.
-Slacked off on Japanese and Hindi. Got a little busy and had to cut back on these two. . .plus I’m still not sure exactly how to approach Japanese. I had been thinking I could just do Kanji like I‘m doing Hanzi, but it seems to be a more complicated matter than that. . .I think I’ve found a book to settle this though, but we’ll see.
Anyway, all is going pretty well. . .ok, I’m gonna end here and just list some topics I want to talk about in the next couple of entries.
- Language Approaches! (Korean next)
- CJK (what is this you ask? Weeellll…you’ll find out when I write about it)
- How to make the most of your languages (you know 40+ languages. . .great. . .now what are you going to do with it??)
- Language Vlogs and audio recordings/pod cast (feeling like you sound like an idiot can be a wonderful motivator)
- Influences your L2 has on your L3 ( some interesting stuff here that I just noticed)
- “ your blog is about languages, why do I see mostly English?”. . .this is what I keep asking myself and has been making me kinda feel like a hypocrite if I don’t start writing in other scripts (at least Korean and some Chinese).
Reminder:
- one step a day. . .
