I was reading a language-learning blog post yesterday that was talking about the importance of using the language from “day one”. To be honest I am not sure I can use that sort of learning approach unless I’m in an immersion situation and forced to come up with ways to communicate daily things, since I seem to have a lot of trouble coming up with things to say when I don’t have sufficient vocabulary otherwise. It would probably also help if I didn’t already find talking to people I don’t know to be kind of a headache and something I avoid. Not to mention I also tend avoid talking to people I know, because I’m a borderline hermit.

Anyway, despite my personal difficulties with employing this kind of learning-style most of the time, I do feel there’s merit to the idea that application matters a lot in terms of how quickly you’ll pick up a language. With the caveat that I haven’t looked up any data on how this applies to people in general, but I do find it true of myself that learn better by “doing” in general, and languages are no exception. But I think it’s kind of up to the individual to figure out how to do that and at what pace– faster isn’t necessarily better, depending on your end goal. This is all a tangent, though.

Still always think in English, and while I switch over somewhat when I am speaking Japanese, it’s an effort and takes a while for me to switch. And then I still end up half-thinking in English which I want to change. At this point I’m realizing I’m writing all my entries in English and thinking in English all the time not because I don’t have the words for it in Japanese, but just because it’s harder/slower in Japanese and I might get it wrong in Japanese, which well. Obviously.

On that note, I think now is the time I should actually start doing more posts on Lang-8. I started doing a 30 day meme a while ago, but I stopped because I found it impossible to figure out how to say some things I wanted to, but I’m thinking I should restart that on Lang-8.

In other news, not sure if I’m going to make even my measly, cut-down-from-the-half-challenge 25-book goal for the Super Challenge. I’m still only at 6 books, and I keep being too tired to read anything longer than a sentence or tiny paragraph. I did just install Yomichan to Anki and started trying to read HP, but in the first sentence alone I ended up with ten cards, so that was a bit hilarious. I’m not really sure how I want to pick out vocab I would like to add as cards yet, because I think it’s probably excessive to save all the words I don’t know completely. Several I could get the gist of from context, but added anyway because I knew I wouldn’t remember pronunciation or a particular nuance. I think maybe I should avoid doing that so I don’t have a million cards just from page 1, and then won’t study them because that’s too much.

Anyway, I’ve been avoiding doing my textbook pages, so I should probably just do that at this point.

Last month I ordered some readers from White Rabbit, which finally arrived today. I think the one I’m most interested in is 「なぜ?どうして?みぢかなぎもん(1年生)」since it addresses cultural things about Japan like, “Why do you say もしもし when you answer the phone?” and also more generalized things like why are stoplights red/yellow/green. Which were the two I read tonight, though honestly I didn’t quite follow the entire explanation of the stoplights.

The other two books I got were 10分で読めるお話 and イッキによめる! the latter of which has some reading comprehension questions (and answers) which is interesting. I didn’t really make it through a story in that one yet, though. I may wait to read this one last, since it seems slightly more advanced than the other two (or at least I lack the vocab for it still).

10分で読めるお話 (at least for the first grade level) seems to be kind of Level 3 絵本, I’d say? Not enough that you could get the whole story from the pictures, but enough to help you along if you’re stuck with the basic idea. It’s interesting reading this one after all the Level 2 JGRs which are theoretically about the same level of picture book. It’s definitely more written for a native Japanese child, with kind of a simplistic idea, but it’s oddly harder to read for me than the JGRs were. I think part of it is that the first story has a lot of dialog that was written as if it was a parent/child talking, which is kind of different, grammatically and in vocabulary, from the focus of student/teacher or colleagues at work that my textbooks tend to take.

絵本 Reviews: Level 3 & 4

Level 3: Kana and kanji are mixed, but the book is mainly written in hiragana. Furigana is provided for any kanji in the text. The content is not only fiction, but may also contain facts or accounts of some natural phenomena. Pictures are the main feature of the book. Japanese native readers would be six to ten years old.

Level 4: Full texts with kanji and kana. Most kanji have furigana. The content is much richer and the length of a story could go over several volumes, but ample pictures help the readers. Most film comics are at this level. Japanese native readers would be eight to twelve years old.

Combining these levels, as personally I haven’t found much available to me that’s much one or the other.

Japanese Graded Readers: Level 2
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絵本 Reviews: Level 2

Level 2: Mainly hiragana and katakana text. If there are kanji, furigana is given for each kanji. The text is longer but still contains a lot of pictures to aid student comprehension. Japanese native readers would be five to eight years old.

はな
[ふねさん]
~90 words

I really liked this one. It’s still hiragana-only, and the sentences are really basic, but it throws in a bit of onomatopoeia, the art is pretty cute, and there’s an actual story, which is kind of sweet. There were a couple words I didn’t know, but I was able to figure most of it out just via context and then checked if I was correct after, so that’s pretty much exactly the sort of thing I’m looking for.

かいじゅうのたまご
ゆうま・み
~150 words

Quite liked this one too, it was a bit funny and silly. Used simpler words, but more complex sentences/concepts, and it fit well as a landscape format on my phone.

絵本 Reviews: Level 1

Level 1: Hiragana and katakana only. The text is very short, and has one-word sentences, phrases, and some complete sentences. There are plenty of visual aids to help convey meaning. Japanese native readers would be three to six years old.

From what I’m getting out of them so far, I’d generally recommend these for someone who is a complete Japanese beginner. Ideally if you were self-motivated enough to just memorize hiragana and katakana before trying to pick up anything else, they would be really helpful in getting some basic words or practicing reading, at least. They are largely for vocab building, because if there are sentences at all, they’re really simple and often just keep repeating, page after page.

From Amazon’s Digital Collection:

こんにちは
[~ふねさん]
24 words

こんにちは くだものさん
[ふねさん]
34 words

おもしろねこちゃんーよんで字ぼうー言葉の本(1歳〜4歳向け
[Anthony Brigs]
21 words

– “おもしろねこ” was more random than the other two, the plain “こんにちは” book is animals, and then “こんにちは くだものさん” is, of course, fruit-themed.

ひーとぴーの絵本「あいさつ」
はすきしのぶ
42 words

I would have liked these better if the digital format on them didn’t kind of suck? The problem is mostly that for some reason the way this book was done, even in landscape mode I couldn’t get two pages to sit side by side. And the way the book was written in print, the words/sentences sit in the center of a two-page spread with illustrations around them, so words get cut off and you have to flip back and forth to read the whole sentence. And I don’t think the illustrations really link to the sentences as much; I knew all the words in it already, but at one point I realized I didn’t have any idea why the illustrations on the page tied into the sentence, so it could be confusing for someone who doesn’t already know the words.