Ultimate language goals.

Currently my immediate language goals is to reach fluency in Japanese in about a year and a half(outside of the time I learned kanji). But ultimately I want to learn more than just Japanese, for I am far too greedy to only know one foreign language, I have a strong desire to learn Mandarin and Cantonese.  I am not sure if I want to learn Cantonese first or if I want to learn Mandarin first but at this point I want to learn both and for varying reasons. Maybe I will try to learn both simultaneously but probably not because I think it’s best to just stick with one language at a time. So for the next 12 years I want to learn most importantly Japanese and then Chinese. So I have broken it down to something like this.

2015-2019 Focus on Japanese 

2019-2023 Focus on Cantonese 

2023-2027 Focus on Mandarin

Now even though I want to reach fluency in each of these languages in 1½-2 years I also want a couple years or so where I spend purely enjoying the language and also heading more to near mastery of each language. Keeping this goal in mind is helpful in that it keeps me sane in that I won’t try to learn Chinese and Japanese simultaneously, because that would be far too much to handle. And plus I still haven’t and can’t decide if I want to learn Cantonese first or Mandarin even though I put Cantonese first in my example, so setting this goal is good for keeping me from dabbing in Cantonese and Mandarin while I am still learning Japanese. When it comes to the beginning of 2019 I can decide then if I want to go with Cantonese or Mandarin first. So what it comes to basically, is I am deciding to make that decision later.  The last thing I want to do is thwart my Japanese learning efforts by trying to decide against the two. But anyway this is what I have planned for the next 12 years(I know such a long time) I will see how things turn out. It’s cool though because I will be able to see this post and know just how I match up to the goals I set. 🙂 

Why I don’t study grammar rules. And why you shouldn’t either.

Khatzumoto from alljapaneseallthetime.com puts it perfectly with this great analogy.

“Learning grammar rules in order to use a language is like learning quantum physics in order to drive a car.”

This is so true! Even though I haven’t been learning Japanese all that long I am already grasping Japanese grammar naturally. There really is no need to learn grammar rules. I think it’s fine to look over some to get an idea but I don’t think it is wise to memorize or stress over them! Grammar can be learned naturally just like when we learned our native language.

Sentences Day 5

So far learning Japanese sentences has been a blast! I am learning so much and surusu.com makes it so easy to do! I definitely enjoy it a lot more than doing just kanji, I think this is because I learned the kanji out of context which is just boring but know I am learning words in context! I look forward to learning more and more as the days go by!

RTK Day 89

As of today I am finished with RTK! I went through all the kanji, now I just need to review them everyday! Starting tomorrow I will be starting the next part in my journey to Japanese fluency. In order to learn the grammar, words, and phrases of Japanese to be fluent I will be learning sentences. What I will be doing is exposing myself to as much Japanese as possible and selecting sentences from the materials that I will be using, such as in anime, dramas, movies, websites, and books. I will also be using a dictionary quite frequently and even use example sentences from there. I will take the sentences that I gather and put them into anki so I can learn them. By doing this along with listening to plenty of real Japanese I will become fluent very naturally. This method had been used by several people to become fluent at a language and I am sure it will work for me as well. This website     http://www.antimoon.com/ explains the method in more detail and how it can be used to learn English and they also admit it can be used to learn any language with some modifications. This other website  http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blog/10000-sentences-how                                   explains the method as well but applied to Japanese.

RTK Day 82

I am growing a bit tired of doing Kanji for some reason. Even though it can often be fun this past couple days it hasn’t been but I have still been doing them. I can’t wait till the next phase in my journey of acquiring Japanese.

RTK Day 80

I didn’t do any kanji yesterday 😦 I was just too tired from a lack of sleep. I recently moved to another apartment and whenever I move places I have trouble sleeping for a couple weeks. Today though I did them! I am now on kanji number 1270 of RTK 4th edition. Just 772 kanji left to go through!