I guess if you look at that way it makes a lot of sense to start with the slice of life “domain”(as he calls it). the common vocabulary feels way smaller than the fantasy realm.
I’ve been enjoying re-watching my favorite shows with Japanese subtitle. I do love fantasy but it’s not going to well… i’ve been trying to make flashcards only for words i somehow recognize and it has not been going very well. most words are completely new and it’s kinda annoying. speaking of the 盾の勇者 (is this the right kanji for shield?), i was re-watching it today. it really enjoyed it(both when it aired and now).
i read through the guide. i guess if there was one thing i wanted to point out, it’s more all encompassing and less opinionated that MIA, like here he include almost all possible ways of cards i can think of. Refold kinda feels like the union of all input based method. finding out what works for you and what doesn’t is going to be very painful/long. I’m not saying there is a shorter way around it but if you find a more opinionated thing, it’s going to be way easier IF and only IF it works well for you.
I guess the only difference between refold and classes that i took(not only for japanese) is that he encourages to start input early on. while there are definitive benefit in listening to a language to get used to it’s phonetic, i don’t think understanding less than 50% is everyone’s cup of tea.
Well, whatever it is, Refold sounds a lot better than MIA as far as its flexibility is concerned. That’s good news.
Probably, especially since slice of life stuff usually more of the words we use in real life. But I think I’ve seen enough fantasy stuff to make a good part of all this ‘familiar’ for me. 仰せのままに、ちから（力）、経験値、転生、魔王、属性、魔法、おっしゃる通り、冒険、剣、武器、防護、装備、討伐… These stereotypical words + all the random keigo that would probably be a little too stiff if used all at once in real life since we don’t often see lords, ladies and monarchs anymore… they’re all fairly familiar by now. Also, I think I don’t mind dealing with all the new words, precisely because it means I can learn more.
Yup, that’s the one. Glad you’re enjoying it. I loved it. Watched it at least thrice in a row, and then a few more times later on. (Yeah, I’m a little crazy that way.)
If flashcards work for you, then by all means, go ahead. What I did with 盾の勇者 when I had time over the summer: I watched every single episode from 1 to 20 with a transcription (from Anicobin) open in another tab, and I looked up every single word I couldn’t understand. I was watching without the subtitles on as much as possible. Do I still remember everything? Probably not. (I don’t take notes or use flashcards. I write the characters in my head or on scrap paper at the most.) Do I think I learnt a lot nonetheless? Yup. I ran out of study time when I hit episode 20 though, so I had to stop and just watch the rest normally, with subtitles so I could understand 100% instead of maybe 70-80%. (PS: The relatively high comprehension rate is due to familiarity. Also, my definition of ‘comprehension’ for the purposes of that intensive study period was ‘I can see the kanji/kana in my head’. Just getting the gist wasn’t enough.) It took a lot of time though, so it’s definitely not something everyone should do.
I personally disagree on this point. Particularly the point where you said “intimate”.
I think bunpro and a lot of other method succeed very well at giving you a general or even a solid idea of how certain grammar points function within the language.
However, to truly get in depth and “intimate” knowledge of grammar, you need to see it used in many contexts in native content imo. I personally didn’t like bunpro, but I think it (and many other tools) are a means to make it easier to get intimate knowledge, but you will never fully acquire grammar through them alone.
Your quibble is well taken. But you can’t get to “intimate” if you don’t have “solid” first, and I am doubtful that a cursory grammar review + immersion can get you to solid (especially considering how tough it is to absorb abstract grammar explanations)… nothing has gotten me to “solid” better than bunpro… and I was a pretty dedicated MIA’r for a while. My 2 cents, worth what you paid for them!
You need to get to solid before you can get to intimate and bunpro and other methods definitely make the road to “solid” easier than just trying to pick it up from native content. Personally, my approach was to come across it in the wild, look up explanations, and put the whole sentence in anki with the grammar point bolded on a card where I needed to answer with the meaning. Thats basically a rough version of bunpro.
I’m just a firm believer that nothing apart from repeated exposure to comprehensible input will truly enable you to acquire/become intimate with a certain piece of knowledge. You don’t need to do it right away, but you need to do it eventually and can use other methods to get partway there. repeated exposure in native content is a must when it comes to that final stage of understanding.
I skimmed through it and I found something weird. I quote :
“you cannot simply take an English sentence and apply an algorithm to convert it into Japanese.
In English, we say “Have you seen my cell phone?”. In Japanese, they say “Do you not know my cell phone?”. There’s no grammar guide in the world that can explain that. It’s just a quirk of the language.”
They’re just assuming the japanese verb means “to know”, but if it’s used by natives to mean “have you seen my cell phone”, then the japanese verb doesn’t only mean “to know”, it would also mean “to see” depending on the context, and their point becomes moot. In japanese, they DON’T say “have you seen my cell phone”, because this is english. They say something in japanese, using a verb that for some reason we decided should mean “know” just because that’s the most frequent context it appears in…
That kind of reasoning is at the heart of why literal translation doesn’t work, they even contradict themselves because first they say we can’t simply convert english to japanese, and then they ironically do exactly that.
I find it worrisome that a website putting itself in the position of teaching japanese makes that kind of mistake. Am I overnerding this ?
Honestly, that’s getting into linguistics, specifically semantics. Semantics is a really tricky thing, and being that the framework isn’t actually providing any learning content (yet), just a strategy for “acquiring” the language, it’s probably not something to get too worried about. Think what you will about Refold, but even natives can’t properly explain the nuance / semantics of some phrases. It truly is something that a lot of students have to gain an intuitive understanding of via exposure and interacting with others in the language.
While I agree that understanding this is not necessarily something to start with, I think they could formulate it so as to not expose learners to a flawed reasoning. After all, they claim to be language experts so they should know better imo.
Yeah, well the marketing speak has gotta show up somewhere. New learning products like to use insightful sounding statements to pique people’s interest and appear revolutionary.
Like the tagline “Acquire. Don’t memorize.”
How are they going to acquire? Via Anki SRS, a tool for improving your ability to memorize things.
I’m not hating though, they’re sharing something that they feel will help people, and it seems they’re not charging for it (yet), so marketing spins aside I’m okay with it. I just want more people to learn Japanese and enjoy the language.
I’m not that bothered about the wording since I assume there’s an implicit “translated word-for-word” in there, but the argument is pretty bizarre. There is a grammar guide that can explain that. It’s the grammar guide that contains the lesson “Have you seen ~?” ↔ “~は知らないの？” (or whatever the Japanese expression is).
Also as a programmer I take the claim that there’s no algorithm that can perform a task very seriously.
Yes, because you might hear a word or two, or a phrase or two by chance while sitting up to do some stretches on your desk every once in a while (so we’re not talking about osmosis). In theory, it holds. In practice, who knows. In any case, it obviously has negligent gains in the grand scheme of things (perhaps other than in the very beginning stage where you’ll want to get used to the sounds).
Yes but that’s not really the point. The only takeaway from this is “you can’t actually use grammar to form native sounding sentences”. If you do, you’ll be basing that off of one of the languages you can speak, and it’ll probably sound wrong or not very native. Sounds very sound to me.
I think it’s just making a stronger case for immersion above grammar rules and literal translations.
This. I really like a quote by someone I can’t remember right now, that goes something like: “If you haven’t already heard how to say something, you don’t really know how to say it.”
