This post is all related to learning another language based on the AntiMoon or AJATT way. If that’s not your thing, you can safely skip this post 
I bought the QRG (Quick Reference Guide) from All Japanese All The Time last night and figured I’d share some thoughts on it for any language learners out there. Being the geek that I am, I didn’t want to burn my crotch while doing it, so I loaded it onto my Sony E-reader PRS-505 first and it’s quite readable on there. Anyway, to the thoughts/review:
Khatzumoto is honest, right off the bat, and tells me I don’t need the QRG. In fact, he tells me I shouldn’t even trust him 
But I figured I’d used his stuff so much, that he deserved some of my money, and it couldn’t hurt to review some basics and remember what I was working towards.
Beginning stuff is pretty standard, if you’ve been to his site, it won’t be anything surprising until you get to the Pedaling and Coasting section. That is, high energy/low energy. Khatz finally hits the nail on the head here and explains how you should divide your time. I won’t go into any more detail as you should really read if for yourself if you are interested.
He has some links to free articles on his site strewn throughout the QRG which I couldn’t visit until after I went back to my computer. Some stuff of interest are in the Action List section.
Khatz put together a good list of immersion videos on Youtube you can check out for free.
He also has links to buy some J-dubbed American TV shows, which is great (but wait, no House? ドクターハウス？ for shame! Don’t worry, amazon.co.jp has it here. )
Khatz’s list of Japanese bands is still lacking, and I must admit, kinda subjective (since Khatz still wants to be underground and not like things that are popular, which is cool, that’s Khatz But I’m not so underground, so I like stuff from つんく♂ (Tsunku), 大塚愛 (Ootsuka Ai)、Morning Musume and the Hello! Project -including anything by 植松 伸夫 (Aya Matsuura)- to Janne Da Arc ジャンヌダルク and of course Mr. Children)
I haven’t touched Surusu and I am too deep into Anki that I can’t switch. Nor do I want to. Khatz reasons for suggesting Surusu are obvious though, he made it Maybe I’ll check it out when I’m done learning Japanese 
The link to a starter source of sentences goes to a really advanced book on Japanese Particles, which is… a bit confusing. I’ll check out the book, but I think Khatz original idea of picking up the Japanese in Mangaland books 1,2, and 3, will get you a better start on sentences (I was able to steal *ahem* sentence mine about 2000 just from those alone.) He also might wish to suggest the 13 Secrets and Japanese the Manga Way and… oh just fix the link to go to his book page: here
Khatz’s long-time theory on deletion is still sound, still based on the Mnemosyne guy’s stuff, and I still can’t bring myself to do it. I don’t delete, but I am sure its a better idea. I simply suspend stuff which bothers me, or let Anki tell me something is a leech and suspend it for me. That way if I really want to learn it later on, I can make a new card from it.
Going Monolingual after 500. Geez, that, that seems early. Honestly, I’m around 3000-4000 and I still haven’t done it.
Some of my recent cards are like this:
Front: 彼は、ミュンヘン 大学の 図書館で 私が銃で 撃った男だ！
Back: munchen, じゅう, うつ, ーーーー＞ 男 ！
Stuff I already know, like 彼 大学 図書館 私 I dont even mention. Things I’m still a bit wary on (or may need a refresher) I put in the かな like じゅう, うつ, the —>男 is simply to tell me that I’m supposed to care about relative clauses here in case I forgot why I made the card. (i.e. that’s the 男 which I shot with a gun in the library of the university of Munchen; Japanese is uber-cool in this)
One more:
Front: 事故がないように 気をつけてください
Back: ように〜＝ ために so that , じこ
Same again, I only put stuff on the back for clarification and reminders. I don’t explain stuff in either language if it’s obvious enough. At this point, I was learning how ように can be used similarly to 為に, and 事故 is relatively recently learned, so I put it there to test me just in case I forget. I imagine this is close to monolingual, but not quite there.
The problem with monolingual too early is that I believe it makes people work too much (80/20 rule here) to look up one word (I know someone who will spend 30 minutes deciphering that one word looked up in the monolingual dictionary, because the definition contained too many other words he did not know). That being the case, you could be wasting your time.
500 cards seems far too early to me. Either that, or Khatz should clarify something like: ‘Look it up in a bilingual dictionary, but only put the answer in your SRS in monolingual, homie!’ If that were the case, I would be inclined to agree. Although, he really shouldn’t be calling me homie.
In summary, or つまり、the biggest things I took away from the QRG were definitely the pedaling and coasting ideas. I hadn’t quite put my fingers on how to balance them, and Khatz explains them pretty well. Unfortunately, I always feel like I’m pedaling and not coasting enough these days.
さって、back to studying
Probably Related:
{ 3 trackbacks }
{ 11 comments… read them below or add one }
You’d be surprised how much you can really pick up on by switching to monolingual. I personally thought that 500 was too late, and made the switch to monolingual at 350.. which even that’s too late. Khatz mentioned once to me that he think it’s possible to go straight monolingual from the start, and I agree with this. But, can’t really change the past, right? Just keep moving forward. ^^
Perhaps I should have clarified a bit. I do use a monolingual dictionary much of the time when looking up words I simply do not know and I have the free-time to be curious. When I do that, I usually use the Sanseido concise dictionary online: http://www.sanseido.net/User/Dic/Index.aspx
Otherwise, when I’m entering SRS or doing SRS reps, I prefer to spend as little time possible pondering the meaning of a word, and I simply enter a quick reminder of any word I don’t know, in 日本語 if I can think of it fast enough, otherwise I use English.
Then again, maybe you’re right and I’m just a wimp
Thanks for the review!
Thanks to all for reading and commenting! It makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside to know that so many are interested in learning Japanese (and have found the best possible method of doing so).
Testing out Facebook Connect and thought I’d post here as I’ll be writing another article about using monolingual dictionaries and some more logical approaches than ‘switch as soon as you can’, which I still believe is nonsense.
hey there, I enjoyed your post! It’s good to connect a bit more with the language learning community, especially Japanese.
Thanks for the comments Daniel!
I agree, which is why I’m shocked Khatz from AJATT ignored my beer request
As far as Japanese language learning there is a great community on AJATT itself as well as many great people on the http://kanji.koohii.com/ site (a great site if you plan on doing Heisig and you are using Anki)
I actually do use Reviewing the Kanji, RTK, and Anki! I wonder if Khatz gets a lot of requests like that.. All the videos of him are with Tokyo Sam. He’s pretty good for replying to my e-mails. Khatz that is.
I don’t think he drinks beer, that was my fault
And I am sure it was lost in his twitter stream of 700 or so people saying ‘hey Khatz you rock!’
I’ve never emailed him, as every question I have ever had is usually answered on his site. I wouldn’t want to *really* bother a busy man. Plus, he started charging for questions last I checked
Do you still use bilingual dictionaries? Or, have to made the switch entirely? ^^ Just curious.
Absolutely still use one.
While in class or reading manga, I stick with the monolingual as it’s a lot easier to use, portable, and has kanji input. But when I need a damn good keyword for a definition of that word in English (or I’m in a hurry and I don’t want just the *feeling* of a word) I still use Jdict, which has a ridiculously extensive vocabulary.
But sometimes the definition in bilingual and monolingual is just lacking, so I make use of the included monolingual dictionary that comes with Mac OS X as well.
In other words, you’re going to have to use a bunch of dictionaries, one just won’t work