Most Awesome Page in the Universe
Sat, 01/14/2006, 03:27
No, it's not Maddox.
This site is something like the most hardcore awesome math/science page ever. It's not too deep, but you'll learn a huge swath of knowledge in short order by sitting down and reading.
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Kana-rama
Mon, 01/09/2006, 05:50
On prompt from one of my most endearing whitewashed Asian friends, I spent the last couple days reviewing my hiragana and katakana, since I've gotten a bit rusty. For those who aren't familiar, katakana and hiragana (collectively referred to as "kana") are two of four Japanese writing systems; along with romanji, they're the phonetic "alphabets".
What I found is that there are some excellent resources available today that weren't available (or that I didn't find) when I was learning.
I was especially impressed with two pages for learning stroke orders:
http://www.nihongoweb.com/kana.html
http://members.aol.com/writejapan/
Also, there is a quiz page that is incredibly effective for sheer rote drilling:
Real kana
The quiz page is a bit like virtual flashcards. Nobody'll claim that you can gain a deep understanding of the underlying material by memorizing, but it's an essential (if tedious) component of any learning. There's an interesting (ADD tangent) tie in with a site I found on
digg today, where "
Project Implicit" has a method for uncovering societal prejudices through (I theorize) response times and error rates. Applying the same kinds of statistical analysis on response times and error rates of a flashcard program would be very helpful in tuning the frequency of prompts for optimal learning. Maybe one day I'll put together something like that.
Long thoughts to follow...
It is interesting, though. It's never been a matter of justification for me to learn something new, but some (many) have questioned the utility of learning to read a language I can't speak or otherwise communicate in. To be honest, the question has merit. I asked this myself, but from the perfectly justifiable "shits and giggles", I've developed some reasons that I feel make it worthwhile from a number of perspectives. Firstly, it's not as though it costs you anything, and as far as skills go, learning kana is easy; I think it took me 8 hours the first time around. Also, I do intend to learn Japanese, so I would need to learn the kana anyway. Then you consider that when learning spoken Japanese as a foreigner, knowing how to read kana is a huge benefit, in that learning phonetics is important in learning the proper sounds of words, and is required in learning the ideographs, and that full literacy is the gateway to learning the spoken language well.
To point, in languages that incorporate Chinese ideographs, it's difficult to learn the multitude of characters. Chinese itself uses small zhuyin or pinyin phonetics alongside characters to help children and foreigners learn the sounds and meanings. Japanese does the same with their borrowed Chinese characters(called "kanji"). Japanese, though, makes the already-daunting task harder, by having several "readings" available for each character. Unlike Chinese, where each character generally has one pronunciation, and a small number of related meanings, Japanese kanji have several pronunciations and meanings, depending on context. As a foreigner trying to learn kanji in an adult world, a reference is required, and these invariably show pronunciations in kana.
Regressing to the bigger picture, learning to read is outright critical. That's not to say that speaking isn't important; it is. But it takes a lot of continuous time, and when you don't have anyone to bother, you can't learn.
Learning to read takes an upfront investment of a handful of hours, but the benefits are cumulative. If you're intent to learn, a book lets you study whenever you have time. If you're not so dedicated, there are still benefits. Every time you see a stray piece of packaging, or stumble across a website, you can pick up another piece of vocabulary, or just listen to the sound and structure of the writing. It's like some people I know, who try learning English by conversation alone. They learn basic skills very quickly, but plateau off very fast. People I know who study English and read books in English nearly ALWAYS have a much better vocabulary, flow, and sentence construction, all of which pay off in having a better daily ability to communicate.
You have to consider the role of technology, too, in bolstering the importance of literacy. In the world of the internet, you're not limited to some basic instruction books and a limited number of foreign language materials at your local library. The net has plenty of diverse source material to study. You have forums to visit, written tutorials with sound, essays, and plenty of native material, straight from the source. If you're reasonably intelligent, you don't even need guides; you can figure a lot of things out, and with tools like
babelfish, you have a virtual Rosetta stone to work with. I think that if you really put your mind to it, it's conceivable that you could learn a language entirely by using the net, and be able to practically use it if you were dropped into a foreign environment.
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