Singularity on the Plane

A go player once blogged along the lines of “For an effective study, it’s not enough to see on the computer screen. To really feel the flow of the game you must pick the stones and lay it out on a real board.”

Those are wise words indeed, and applies all the same to kanji writing study.

On the early days of my kanji study, I only put “reading” questions on the flash card program Mnemosyne. Those are questions such as:

Q: 火
A: ひ (fire)

When given the question (e.g., “火”), it tests whether you know its reading and meaning. However it doesn’t test your writing ability at all.

Of course, my naive hope was that “if I know how to read it, I’ll know how to write it”. However that certainly isn’t true. For one thing, I know lots of logos (Windows, Firefox, Ubuntu, UGM, ITB, etc) but couldn’t draw them. Practicing reading will only improve your reading ability, and to be able to write there is no way other than to practice writing.

So, realizing that I forget how to draw many kanji, I started putting “writing” questions in Mnemosyne such as:

Q: ひ (fire)
A: 火

(The questions are per kanji, not per word. Therefore there are no questions such as だいがくせい (大学生) because it asks for 3 kanji)

Initially, when faced with writing questions I would draw the kanji on computer using my own program StrokeReplayer. However, writing using the mouse is clumsy so I resorted to the traditional ink and paper:

I’m really feeling the flow of the kanji…

My previous word dump was 24 days ago. For the current series of word dump (this, this, this, this, this, and this), I collected 129 new kanji and 625 new words. That makes my total kanji count 1645 and word count 8311.

For songs, I’m starting to get the hang of it. It’s now not rare to find songs lyrics which I can completely read. But for Wikipedia articles, it’s still no good. Here’s the Wikipedia article on Einstein viewed with my eyes. There are still lots of red (unknown) kanji.

What better way to continue from Newton and Galileo than to hunt words from Aristotle (2007-03-13) itself? I got 47 kanji and 132 words.

Here are the kanji:

羅矜矯羞獣導逍践捉繹寡侍廊倒偉韻衡岐巧謬僭顎倣浄庸損厚豪遍辱侮奉均液貢聘肯妥層乾湿疇善潔財粋醜

And the words:

(more…)

This is Matsuura Aya’s 14th single (lyrics, translation). The song is so nice that the composer, Tsunku, sang a version of it.

2 new kanji:

冗些

5 new words:

This is the theme song of the drama Takaramono (lyrics). The story is about Sen, a girl that lived away from his hometown to forget the tragedy of eathquake that had befell it. She had left her hometown for so long that she also forgot all the sweet memories of her childhood there. The main star and the singer of the song is no other than Abe Natsumi.

Everyone knows the kanji 青 (あお, blue or green) which is taught in grade 1. However, in the song lyrics I found another あお, 蒼. According to Windows XP’s IME, 青 is for blue or green in the general sense while 蒼 is for dark or dull blue. An example is 蒼い月夜 (aoi tsukiyo, (dark) blue moonlit night).

Also, I already know the kanji 哀れむ (あわれむ, to pity). However in this song the kanji is used for かなしい (哀しい, sad) instead of the usual 悲しい. According to Windows XP’s IME, 悲しい is for sad in the general sense while 哀しい has a more painful sense. An example is 哀しい響き (kanashii hibiki, a (painful) sad sound).

There are 3 new kanji:

臆蒼贈

And 6 new words:

This is Morning Musume’s 16th single (lyrics). An energetic happy song that I really enjoy.

The kanji 会う (あう, to meet) is very common. In this song, I meet (no pun intended) another あう, 逢う. 会う is for meeting someone in a general sense, while according to EDICT 逢う has a more dramatic sense. An example is ここで逢った (koko de atta, I met (my girlfriend) here (for the first time)).

I also already know 超える (こえる, to exceed), but in this soung I found another こえる, 越える. According to Windows XP’s IME, 超える is for quantity or limit, while 越える is for place or time. Some examples:

• 定員を超える (teiin wo koeru): to exceed the passenger capacity (e.g., boat)
• 予想を超える (yosou wo koeru): to exceed expectation
• 国境を越える (kokkyou wo koeru): to go past the country border
• 山を越える (yama wo koeru): to go past the mountains

So, these are the 2 kanji:

逢越

which corresponds to these 2 words:

For this time, there are noticably lots of organ-related kanji (e.g., 筋 (suji), muscle) because I once did a word hunt for organs.

I got 32 kanji:

盾矛唇緊撃縁怖擦踏沈透零潤肝腰爪掴抑渋褐斗膚舌濃戯灰額招筋肺震杯

And 116 words:

(more…)

Random words and kanji are those that I randomly encounter, for example while watching a movie.

Side-effect words are dictionary words that I picked when learning a new kanji from another dump. For example, I encountered 激しい (hageshii, intense) while hunting from a song. 激 was a new kanji for me, and to know its on-reading I searched for some compounds in the dictionary. Those compounds, e.g. 激化 (gekika, intensification) are considered side-effect words because they are not in the original material.

It is also possible that I deliberately set out to memorize words or kanji from a particular source, but the amount is too small to warrant its own section.

For this time, the notables sources are Hello! Morning and Hello! Project members.

I gathered 43 kanji:

李栞椰萩妨紫採維汁銭浜敢卑餓卬貰肋閏謗或誹旁沓弥迎琳駁痺睪臤癖漬披厳紋趣締避虚浦奏穴衝

And 364 words…

(more…)

Audacity is a free (open source) audio recording application. It is multiplatform, with versions for Windows, Linux, and OS X. By default it outputs the final audio in ogg/vorbis, but mp3 support can be added quite easily.

In this article I’ll guide you how to record a karaoke using Audacity. What it means is that you have an instrumental (music-only) version of a song and you want to add your (horrible) sound to it.

First of all you need to have the instrumental version of the song itself. In the Japanese music scene, singles are released in CD which also includes its instrumental version so download go buy that CD and rip the audio. Audacity supports wav, mp3, ogg, and some other formats as its input.

After that download the program and install it. For this guide I’m using version 1.2.6 for Windows. The first screen should look like this:

Now make sure your mike is plugged to the right place and the correct stream (e.g., “Mic”) is selected in the input drop down. Press the record (red circle) button and mumble some words. You’ll see a new audio track created. Press the stop (yellow square) button and try to play back by pressing the play (green arrow) button.

In the top left of every audio track, there is a small “x” button (pictured above). You can click it to delete the track. If you think the recorded volume is too loud or small, delete your first audio track, adjust the volume (the slider with a mic icon), and try another recording. When you are satisfied with the volume, you can go to the next step.

Load the instrumental version of the song from “File”->”Open…”. After the importing process is done you will see the the audio tracks. Before you start recording though, you need to make sure that Audacity plays those tracks while recording. This step is probably the most important but nonobvious. Go to “Edit”->”Preferences…”, open “Audio I/O” tab, and select “Play other tracks while recording new one” (see below).

After that you can go to the real fun. Press the record button and sing until the song ends. Your voice will be kept in a new track so if you’re not satisfied just delete the track and record again. To finish, select “File”->”Export As Ogg Vorbis…” and the resulting file can be played in any sane media player (such as VLC or Windows Media Player after installing the codecs).

Below are some stuffs which you probably want to do…

Changing pitch

If you can’t hit some note because it’s too low or high, you might want to change the pitch of the musical instruments before recording your sound. To do it, press CTRL+A (select all) and go to “Effect”->”Change Pitch…”. For example, to lower it you might select from “F” “down” to “E”. Note that the instruments will have a lower quality and sound unnatural if you do this.

MP3 export

OGG Vorbis is a free format while MP3 is proprietary so you should prefer OGG Vorbis when possible. In cases where using MP3 is a must (such as to play on MP3 players) the supports can be easily enabled.

First download LAME MP3 encoder for your operating system. Then extract the compressed file somewhere. After that go to “Edit”->”Preferences…” and open the “File Formats” tab. Press “Find Library” and browse for the requested file (e.g., lame_enc.dll for Windows). With that, you can export to MP3 from “File”->”Export As MP3…”.

Closing

I won’t give an example exported file here. Just have fun, but remember to respect your friend’s ears.