Singularity on the Plane

Wow… I haven’t done my dump for ages. The last one was around 3 months ago!

But rest assured, since graduation I have been doing lots of real readings. I stil haven’t finished the monstrous Wikipedia WW2 article. I also managed to read some stories from bookstudio, mostly ren’ai stuffs and some adventures. Plus some other random stuffs like newspapers and some physical books I have.

I also still haven’t finished these two textbooks: Routledge and Colloquial Japanese. I’m also still listening to japanesepod101 daily to improve my listening. I’ve finished all survival and newbie series, and now halfway through beginner season 1 :).

But now that I’m now officially working as a programmer whose job doesn’t have anything to do with Japanese, my time to study Japanese has decreased significantly. Let’s just hope it doesn’t die out. Please everyone, pray for me.

Anyway, for this dump I’ve gathered 300 new kanji and 491 new words. Now the total is 2,609 kanji and 10,888 words. Yes, I’ve passed the 2,500 milestone!

Impressive? Well, I think I still need around 500 more to achive the level of literacy I want. I still occasionally find new ones, see? The key here is constancy. If I keep reading and learning new kanji, no matter how slow it is, it will pile up. In my case, the average learning rate between my last dump and this one is only 3.9 kanji per day. That’s not too demanding, right? Couple it with Mnemosyne so you won’t forget kanji you’ve learned.

One tip today for those also learning kanji. Don’t get too caught up in artificial lists (Jouyou, JLPT)! Go find some real reading material and learn the kanji you find there! By experiencing how the kanji is actually used, it will stick on your mind more easily. You might be interested to know that from the 2600+ kanji I’ve learned, I still haven’t encountered three grade 5 and one grade 6 Jouyou kanji. And of course lots of grade 8 kanji. That’s depite the fact that I found lots of “gradeless” kanji! Shows you how useful those lists are…

The only time where you should exhaust an artificial list is when you’re going to take a test with predetermined kanji (e.g., JLPT) soon. Other than that, you can forget about them.

Anyway, here are all the new kanji:

耕俵賃卵憾恨剤剖泥憤窮喪藻准酬酵紡祉劣鯨鋳濫庶忌衰痢弦栓酢沼繕懲閥礁堕諭粘唆朴膜畔虜禍疾較塊稚炊隅彫憂耗爵勲賊糧悦吟穫漸慨隻累霧鎮囚棺愁賄硫鉢窯剛墜狩洪脂昆喬那捷爾鷹彬冶雛匡宏瑚胡鮎蒔晃瑛綺艶杏玲鯛碧倭蓮鶴倖毅茜祐眉袈裟鳳瞭杜耽盧醒嬌倅甥賁躬壺澡嵒癌國對汪峯鍼雚灌旡漑賑榮梁刅桼膝鵜裾氾諜隂榴憐楚諺孚孵芻殲註楯迂坦匛柩匙厷鮪躓珊瞑冥埶藝鼎蹲夋戚尗脆冨撒鞍晦顛顚喩囁妓叱驢哨壽躊躇溌剌悖遜狐與嶼蜂卜頷叕啜雫掬鬯鬱蛤烏曖昧雜囃菱霰俯淵蚤掻怯焚眈窺隙涛偕炸絨毯戮翏耒廻蓋盍牡鴨禽浙咳厠珀奄串魏酎隺堺楔犀蛾皺栖醤籤韱怨杓這睫顰姑舅艮饂飩噤厓弄鯖煎凭吃麺拉軋蕩謨匆枷戎賂櫛凰羔匋掏仇妬耄彔碌抓膠撰洛苔廿燕臙汝鎧

And the words:

(more…)

Excuse my laziness of blogging… You see, I’m now in this remote place called Sokaraja and circumstances force me to go to the town Purwokerto to surf the net. That’s quite far for my standard and so… Well enough excuses.

This will be just another monotone dump, but believe me the study isn’t as boring as this post looks. I’ve dumped 92 new kanji and 131 new words, for a total of 2,309 kanji and 10,354 words. Believe me, even with this amount of kanji I’m still humbled by the amount of new characters I found every day. Just keep moving on and know no surrender.

To spice things up a bit, I’ll tell you my current Japanese diet. I’m still trying to finish that WW2 article on Wikipedia. It goes roughly two paragraphs a day, so probably hell will freeze faster. I’m also playing freeciv, an open source game which has a Japanese translation! Not so much playing, but exploring all the text inside and trying to read it. If you’re interested in trying it but has problems, just mail me (for me I can’t just run it and get a usable learning environment, but I’m not writing about it now). Like explained on another post, I’m also still going through “Japanese: A Comprehensive Grammar”. All those and randomly leafing through Japanese books I have/borrowed.

Ah, I almost forget… I also now regularly listen to podcasts downloaded from japanesepod101.com. Be sure to visit that site!

So here are the kanji:

肥醸陶婆浸艇殻疫謀喝騰迅肢燥紳捜侯赴薫該貞偵晶拷謹刃彰銃痴斎附帥稼簿弊絞宥邑昌旭禎嘉慧栗堆晒曾傀儡爺塹壕揆簒恫剃蟹宋楷艸已筈馳飴瘡汲釧喉瞿矍攫侭謂唖尖曰籠夭訃凛繚峙骸崖袖嘗袴溺牽溥奢綻

And the words:

(more…)

A regular run of the mill dump post. So yeah, I still read Japanese materials routinely to find new words and especially kanji, and right now my main sources are the WW2 article on Wikipedia which is still a long way to finish and starting to get extremely boring and tiresome (勃発、勃発、侵攻、侵攻), an encyclopedic Japanese grammar book “Japanese: A Comprehensive Grammar” from “Routlege Grammars” which I like very much because it contains translations and for every example which is written in genuine Japanese characters, and some other reading sources like the various Japanese magazines and books I have on my disposal which I open randomly and by whim (see screenshot above for an example). Oh, and if you think the previous sentence is too long, blame me for reading too much written Japanese in which sentences are unreasonable long which is apparently just for the author’s pleasure to torment foreign readers which are not accustomed for such lengthy parsing using their untrained brain which is actually a very capable biological computer.

For this dump, there are 100 new kanji and 178 new word. Now my kanji count is 2,217 and my word count is 10,223. It might be interesting to know that among those 2200 or so kanji, I still haven’t encountered six grade 5 kanji and three grade 6 kanji! So there you have it for the commonness of Jouyou kanji.

Note about my method of memorizing these words and kanji. When I encounter new words, I searched for it in an electronic dictionary and then put it on my spreadsheet file of Japanese words (and kanji). I just collect it there as much as I find. Then, I separately put the words there to Mnemosyne, first come first serve. These two are not synchronized, so I don’t have to directly put all words I find to Mnemosyne. In fact, I have almost 3,000 words that I’ve put on my word list waiting to be put into Mnemosyne.

Anyway, here are the kanji:

穀律尺酔怠賓克債墨戒併隷循誇呈排斥薪漂錯枠弧賠窒掌覇津襟某斉撲罰封搭溝啓妄祥洲伽麿蘭玖伍綜渚晋叡哉眸鯉緋鳩冴卆蒋并餅孛勃葛盡儘夸牒狼厭猒區謳賭阡萬肆捌陌戊庚癸苺膣腟氐咸股踪幟摺柿匪榧刳肛菐斬荅亢杭釘惧

And the words:

(more…)

Even though I didn’t update my blog for the past 5 months or so, I still study Japanese and log the diffs. My source to hunt new words and kanji on that time period was numerous. In short, I now try to gobble any reading materials I come across, so writing them all here would be quite painful for me, the reporter. This marks quite a departure from my previous policy of “finish reading one thing before even finding another”. Here are some highlights, though: Wikipedia articles, my cousin’s Routledge grammar book, Yahoo! Dictionary, free Japanese games, free Japanese stories, Yahoo! Japan (a magazine), and Bungei Shunjuu (a very thick magazine). I’ll probably elaborate my reading sources on other posts.

I gathered 288 new kanji and 780 new words. So now my kanji count is 2,117 and my word count is 10,045. Here’s how I would see the Wikipedia page on AKB48 and global warming (unknown kanji in red). I think I need around 3000 kanji before I would stop encountering new kanji every now and then.

Here are the kanji:

豊飼輸綿税銅恩操拝縦仁俳吸儲盟株蔵拡蒸誠絹揮孝繊胞勺釣圏幅譜療伺薦慈胎疎慮軸齢幽噴跳躍艦菌筒逮督匠巨壇枯刈崩畳肌施顕脅託洞遭曹遇漠犠牲徴煩鐘逐苗挑沸傍肖旬堀凡帆岬摂娯屯鈍鋭征棋雌陵詐欺岳丙雇陥腐崇貫塁畜蓄惨訟喚桟亭泰駐峠珠揚雷霜需砲妊娠欧裸渇茎耐拘泡恭粛顧欄緩融且徐伐剰侵逝愚弔芳稲隆慎掘斤漆遷萌旦媛阿只敦駒爽稀憧茅丞錦亮璃朋椿霞呂斐嵐綾喿畐尞敝瞥爰頁姜卉笠旱桿囷隶嶋攸條篠亶乞迄鶉喰壬淫乂辿龍冝爬彙彑碗渠乇窟棲禸厶冂禺捲詫勿几豕憬弗吊兒睨鞘勹惹忽惚挨拶諦烝尤稽辻耆嗜婉帛离笥箪玩夌埠矣埃狙揃淋擢辣奐篭蒙榊腺甬桶叚蔓茸咼鍋坐挫甦圣粦燐鱗侶漕箸訣瓦煉扁騙鬲眞槇塞瀕幡尸斧蜜曳洩焉

And all the words:

(more…)

It has been a long time since my last word and kanji dump, hasn’t it? My last dump was more than 2 months ago :).

Even though my word and kanji hunting isn’t as intense as before, thankfully I still managed to do it. For the current dump (here, here, and here), I gathered a total of 184 kanji and 954 words. It’s not as scary as it sounds, because I didn’t cram it afternight. It took around 2 months, so that’s only around 3 kanji and 15 words per day which I think is very lousy :). The key is “persistence” (oh, and Mnemosyne).

So now my kanji count is 1829 and my word count is 9265. As can be expected, even with that amount of kanji I still can’t read a “random” Wikipedia article satisfactorily. Click here to visit the article on Thomas Alva Edison viewed with my eyes. Kanji not yet learned are colored red, and there are still a significant amount of them.

I shouldn’t be satisfied yet…

After going far back in time with Aristotle, I hunted words from the article of a more recent thinker, Einstein (2007-04-05). I got 68 kanji and 257 words.

Here are 5 selected new words from the article:

• 学術 (gakujutsu, science)
• 特殊 (tokushu, special); this is the “toku” used in tokusatsu.
• 相対 (soutai, relative); tokushu and soutai is used in 特殊相対性理論 (tokushu soutai-sei riron, special theory of relativity)
• 爆弾 (bakudan, bomb)
• 核兵器 (kakuheiki, nuclear weapon)

Here are the kanji:

縫患遽慰歓捏歪廃滞到陳拍傾泊尉挟憩賽粗貌穂翠豸俸恣榛核虐瘤莫爆皃伴伎拗障衆党装槍倶討應群巾揶鉱云殊拭鹸培炉桑謡勘諮凱峡症揄髭棄惜把益渉偏

And all the words:

(more…)

At the beginning of my Japanese study, I memorize lots of words without bothering to learn their kanji. Now I am not afraid of enountering new kanji, so I gradually learn the kanji of those words.

I got 22 kanji:

徨乍雰儚巷呆繁彷凧妙幻宵恵互添癒睡繰柔壁翳掃

And 86 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 sources are, among others, TV shows (Utaban, Haromoni@, etc.), Shokotan’s blog (the so-called cat eater and hyper-productive blogger), and place names in Japan.

I gathered 94 kanji:

壮胆滴兪浣舟甚乏冊諾甲丹謎咅鍵瞼刖愈柑鹵咨豈舐橘硬煮殴盤栽券召至堅賀貧凶軒篤朱据陣綱亥陰匹茂敏弐壱湧括獲滝滋舗舎潟湾曙凪秦餃襲卯巳販酷胴酉翔呪栃茨阜雁戈僉雀蔑臼埼戌蜷馴弯楓募丘妖丼畿溜貪蒦

And 611 words…

(more…)

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…)