My Japanese Progress: Years Study in Few Months!
This is month things were going great. I couldn't catch up with a healthy meal plan yet but the rest are good. The waking up early in the morning, going to bed on time, work out and the big deal my progress in Japanese and kanji which I'll be talking about today.
I already mentioned how I grow love for this language for it's writing. I love kanji a lot. My progress this month was really fast. I mean like what I couldn't do in years is really happening just in couple months! Seriously! At first I didn't know where to start & I found a guy when I was looking for some manga to download and he was kinda posting lessons on how to learn Japanese. I contacted him and that was the first guy I talked to in myself life, also the first person from the net cause back then I wasn't interested a lot about internet cause I didn't know what it is.
Anyhow, when I asked him he didn't give me what I wanted instead he just wasted my time and gave me a random link, all this happened in 2007 so when I knew he won't help I left him and began searching on my own through Google, like self teaching.
My real start was from About.com the Japanese section [Link] basic lessons are posted by a native Japanese lady. It was so helpful and gave me a kick start. I used to take a lesson at a time treating it like an institution or something like that and I didn't do much. This is where I was wrong. When learning language on your own you should take as much as you can to finish it faster. I mean like when I finished the introductory lessons which used to be really really simple I came to kanji. This is where the big thing is. You see I used to believe that kanji is hard cause this is all that I read from people, so hard at a point that I avoid anything written or related to it which was the main point that kept me back from finishing it earlier. Kanji is Chinese characters that has a meaning rather than a sound. This is one writing system which is somewhat hard the other one is kana. They are simple sounds just like any other alphabets.
I started writing the kanji in a notebook for later study, that was in 2008, every day I just write in my notebook and consider myself already learning the language, like seriously thinking just by writing them down I'm already catching it. I don't know where I got that idea from but it was totally nothing at all. I mean really, writing alone isn't learning, it's only copying. Anyhow, I kept writing and writing then stopped for like until 2012 and wanted to start all over again. I did the first grade, only learning the kanji 5 at a day, just memorizing without applying them anywhere (like reading, writing) and again thought I'm going on the right line. Again I was wrong, first kanji alone isn't learning a language, second just the character without other practices isn't learning. When I searched the net again for advance lessons I couldn't find much more then the same lessons repeated everywhere. The greetings, colors, family, fruit, and you know how the list goes on.
When I thought of growing the language I knew it will take more than just writing so I added, reading and speaking to it. So every day I take 10 kanjis instead of 5 and review them again every weekends. Plus, I read articles in Japanese with kanji, also writing them down to practice my hand on the characters. I didn't find anyone to practice the speaking with yet but just by doing this I got a big progress going on. Regarding the grammar, when I first thought of speaking I said to myself I'll need a lot of rules of grammar to know the structure of the sentence but then found another easier way to do it and believe it's the right one too. When learning a language I think it's best to do it naturally, like just speak as you hear and just ask for few things you don't know. That's learning like a native. You know, like when we were babies we didn't learn the grammar to speak, we just learned as we heard and that makes it easier, fun and right way to learn.
I learned English and Arabic that way. The funny thing is when I knew I won't need any grammars for my progress all those lessons and book for intermediate and advanced level learner came right to me. I even found those books to download for free. Like seriously! It's not about what you learn it's about how you apply it but I guess a little extra more knowledge won't hurt, no?!
Today, my Japanese is becoming more natural than like a learning person. I get so happy when I can figure out the reading for a kanji I didn't learn yet and it's so easy and fun just the thoughts of other people and myself made it hard for me when it was nothing but a big amount. Kanji is more than 2,000 character - 2,136 kanji to be exact. It's too much but not HARD. Guess all that I needed was a real start instead of hearing what negative things other people say to buy their program or just because. Passion and right practice with memorizing few basics.
What I started from 2007 to 2013 and couldn't put up a sentence properly have done a lot in just 2 months and will finish it all in just 7 months!
I don't know how much of you guys out there are interested in kanji or least in another language but I just had to write my progress [which I'm really proud of] in here.
I already mentioned how I grow love for this language for it's writing. I love kanji a lot. My progress this month was really fast. I mean like what I couldn't do in years is really happening just in couple months! Seriously! At first I didn't know where to start & I found a guy when I was looking for some manga to download and he was kinda posting lessons on how to learn Japanese. I contacted him and that was the first guy I talked to in myself life, also the first person from the net cause back then I wasn't interested a lot about internet cause I didn't know what it is.
Anyhow, when I asked him he didn't give me what I wanted instead he just wasted my time and gave me a random link, all this happened in 2007 so when I knew he won't help I left him and began searching on my own through Google, like self teaching.
My real start was from About.com the Japanese section [Link] basic lessons are posted by a native Japanese lady. It was so helpful and gave me a kick start. I used to take a lesson at a time treating it like an institution or something like that and I didn't do much. This is where I was wrong. When learning language on your own you should take as much as you can to finish it faster. I mean like when I finished the introductory lessons which used to be really really simple I came to kanji. This is where the big thing is. You see I used to believe that kanji is hard cause this is all that I read from people, so hard at a point that I avoid anything written or related to it which was the main point that kept me back from finishing it earlier. Kanji is Chinese characters that has a meaning rather than a sound. This is one writing system which is somewhat hard the other one is kana. They are simple sounds just like any other alphabets.
I started writing the kanji in a notebook for later study, that was in 2008, every day I just write in my notebook and consider myself already learning the language, like seriously thinking just by writing them down I'm already catching it. I don't know where I got that idea from but it was totally nothing at all. I mean really, writing alone isn't learning, it's only copying. Anyhow, I kept writing and writing then stopped for like until 2012 and wanted to start all over again. I did the first grade, only learning the kanji 5 at a day, just memorizing without applying them anywhere (like reading, writing) and again thought I'm going on the right line. Again I was wrong, first kanji alone isn't learning a language, second just the character without other practices isn't learning. When I searched the net again for advance lessons I couldn't find much more then the same lessons repeated everywhere. The greetings, colors, family, fruit, and you know how the list goes on.
When I thought of growing the language I knew it will take more than just writing so I added, reading and speaking to it. So every day I take 10 kanjis instead of 5 and review them again every weekends. Plus, I read articles in Japanese with kanji, also writing them down to practice my hand on the characters. I didn't find anyone to practice the speaking with yet but just by doing this I got a big progress going on. Regarding the grammar, when I first thought of speaking I said to myself I'll need a lot of rules of grammar to know the structure of the sentence but then found another easier way to do it and believe it's the right one too. When learning a language I think it's best to do it naturally, like just speak as you hear and just ask for few things you don't know. That's learning like a native. You know, like when we were babies we didn't learn the grammar to speak, we just learned as we heard and that makes it easier, fun and right way to learn.
I learned English and Arabic that way. The funny thing is when I knew I won't need any grammars for my progress all those lessons and book for intermediate and advanced level learner came right to me. I even found those books to download for free. Like seriously! It's not about what you learn it's about how you apply it but I guess a little extra more knowledge won't hurt, no?!
Today, my Japanese is becoming more natural than like a learning person. I get so happy when I can figure out the reading for a kanji I didn't learn yet and it's so easy and fun just the thoughts of other people and myself made it hard for me when it was nothing but a big amount. Kanji is more than 2,000 character - 2,136 kanji to be exact. It's too much but not HARD. Guess all that I needed was a real start instead of hearing what negative things other people say to buy their program or just because. Passion and right practice with memorizing few basics.
What I started from 2007 to 2013 and couldn't put up a sentence properly have done a lot in just 2 months and will finish it all in just 7 months!
I don't know how much of you guys out there are interested in kanji or least in another language but I just had to write my progress [which I'm really proud of] in here.