The problem with right and wrong in learning language is that everything on the wrong side is considered ‘bad’ and we’re afraid of ‘bad’ things so we avoid them. Forgetting kanji is bad, forgetting a meaning is bad, misunderstanding is bad, reading something that’s too ‘difficult’ is bad, watching a movie where you don’t understand [...]
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The Irrelevancy of Right and Wrong – Part 1
A reader, phauna, recently added some interesting thoughts to several posts here. I originally wanted to respond to the points he introduced but HiddenSincerity and toadhjo came along with some great food for thought. But really, at the heart of these discussions is right and wrong. Recalling the right answer for a given kanji. Grouping words [...]
There Are No Reading Levels
This post has been a very long time coming. It’s about how we approach reading Japanese. It’s about expectancy versus expectation. Expectations are what happens in a perfect world. The ideal. What’s supposed to happen. It’s a list of vocabulary or kanji we’re supposed to know when we see them. Expectancy is anticipating and dealing [...]
What is the Purpose of Study?
First off, my apologies for falling behind in posting. I was doing some experimentation with learning Japanese. But it all relates to the question at hand. What is “study” for? This question isn’t unique to language learning, we could ask it for anything that takes years to learn. But it’s a question that, I think, [...]
Exile Catchy Best – Well Said.
Exile Catchy Best….Catchy….Catchy Best. In English that sounds absolutely horrible. No English pop group would dare put such a name on their album but there it is on a new best hits album from the J-Pop group Exile. Sometimes it seems like the Japanese are intentionally butchering English to make some crazy point. In Japanese, [...]