Nihongojouzu

Lifehacks for Mobile Translators

Ever thought about where your Japanese study may take you? Would you like to use your Japanese to travel the world and make a living? You might be interested in the slide presentation Jed Schmidt presented at IJET17 (the 17th International Japanese/English Translation Conference) on June 17 in Kobe. Jed is a technical J-E translator who spent the last 2 years living and working in Sweden, China, Hawaii and Australia, making his office in cafes and keeping in touch with clients via the internet.  Find out exactly how he does it  by checking out the Flickr slideshow Lifehacks for Mobile Translators.

Why people learn languages

For a detailed look at exactly why people learn languages check out this longish article from zompist.com. To the point, jargon free and not afraid to poke at sacred cows, for example the  myth that children learn languages easily:

This is a popular commonplace, and one asserted by linguists as well, mostly due to Noam Chomsky's belief in an innate 'language organ'. (Steven Pinker's The Language Instinct popularizes Chomsky's ideas.) Unfortunately, the evidence is against it.

Children begin learning languages at birth (infants pay attention to their parents' voices, as opposed to random noises or even other languages), and haven't really mastered its subtleties before the age of ten years. Indeed, we never really stop learning our language. (See David Singleton, Language Acquisition: The Age Factor, p. 56.) This isn't exactly the sort of behavior (like foals walking an hour after birth) that we call 'instinct' in animals.

But at least it's effortless, isn't it? Well, no, as we can see when children have a choice of languages to learn. What's found is that, to be frank, children don't learn a language if they can get away with not learning it.

When you realise how long it takes Japanese kids to learn their own language it puts your own language learning into perspective.

How to Learn Any Language Forum

Following a link from the Japanese for Life post The Languages of An Educated Person I took a look at the How to Learn Any Language Forum ("The website about teaching yourself languages") where polyglot linguistics professor Alexander Arguelles shares his linguistic biography - a fascinating and inspirating read. The Forum has a lot of practical tips - well worth a gander.

もっと脳を鍛える（Motto Nou wo Kitaeru)

The Nintendo DS Lite is a beautiful creature which can get you all hot and bothered just by looking at it, but without software you have little more than a sexy, expensive paperweight. Enter もっと脳を鍛える. Developed by Dr Ryuta Kawashima, a neuroscientist and author of the bestseller "Train Your Brain: 60 Days To A Better Brain", もっと脳を鍛える　is marketed as a series of exercises aimed at stimulating the brain to keep you mentally young. The game is referred to as Dr. Kawashima's Brain Training 2 in Europe & Australia and Brain Age 2 in the USA (did someone think the word "training" would put Americans off? ) but since these versions are in English they are useless as Japanese study materials and I offer them only by way of interest and because I wanted to be a pedantic wanker and point out that while the American translation does retain assonance, Brain Training is both a better translation of 脳を鍛える and it rhymes.

Observant readers will note that  the  inclusion of the word もっと　(more) in the software title (the number 2 in the English language versions)  implies that there is an original version in existence - and yes, you are correct, 脳を鍛える　(Brain Training) exists, but もっと脳を鍛える looked more interesting so I bought it first.

Fire up the program and you are greeted with an animated Dr Kawashima head on the left and a menu on the right. You can take a trial run お手軽版, do your daily training 毎日トレーニング　or 'download play', ie connect wirelessly to other DS users within range and  share data.

Dr Kawashima's head is very helpful and offers lots of advice during the course of your brain training. His advice is of course in Japanese, and this is where your Japanese reading starts to get a small workout. It is possible to ignore what the head says and just hit the 次へ button but that would be a waste of an excellent chance to learn some new kanji, right? 記録済み?  You have already finished today's training and your results recorded.

There are a whole bunch of  training exercises  including simple maths calculations at high speed and musical note recognition but let's take a look at the meat and potatoes - kanji.   

The first kanji test consists of various kanji radicals floating around - your job is to draw the kanji they make up. Nice and easy at first. If you can't put two trees together you probably aren't ready for もっと脳を鍛える. I'm not being cruel - the challenges get difficult real soon.

After having my arse served to me on a plate I took great pleasure in watching Japanese friends struggle to put some of the kanji back together. The super-awesome-wonder feature is that you can go back and redo every test as many times as you want - until you can draw every kanji - real mastery learning. Great for learning radicals and good writing practice.

The second kanji check gives you a sentence in Japanese with one of the kanji replaced by katakana - your job is to draw the kanji. Trickier than the radical check because you don't have the components in front of you - pretty much a case of you know it or you don't. 10 basic (I won't say easy) problems and one 難しい (ie a real bastard you are unlikely to have ever seen before) kanji per level. For example, my first daily training included 罷. Again, the ability to keep going back and redoing the quiz means that you can learn a lot of readings.

The brain workout for each day is set and once you have completed it you receive a hanko mark showing that you trained your brain on that day. If you don't train every day Dr Kawashima's head tells you off.

As you progress new tests are introduced - and when I get to that stage I will write another post.

The verdict - although according to the DS I have the brain of a 54 year old man I can say that I have achieved 2 things by using this software:

1. I know a fair few more kanji than I did a week ago.

2. I had a good time doing so.

Highly recommended.

Nintendo DS Lite

Following the first of my presentations at the JET Tokyo Recontracting Conference I was approached by a bunch of people evangelising the Nintendo DS Lite as an alternative or supplement to an electronic dictionary like the Canon Wordtank . Now I'm not much of a gamer. My last contact with Mario was via a Gameboy back in the early 80s, I Doom'ed in the office during the 90s and these days I occasionally sate my desire to shoot people with the odd session of Time Crisis. Why would I suddenly be interested in the DS Lite?

Well, for one, it looks like the the love child of an iPod and an iBook and I am a sucker for well designed devices.

Secondly, writing a kanji on the screen and having the readings, sample compounds etc pop up gave me a giddy thrill.

I had to have one. Off to Akihabara. Sold out everywhere. Shinjuku - same story. I went to about 6 big electronics stores and was about to give up when I spotted Sakuraya. I walked in, saw one DS Lite on the shelf and grabbed it. 16,000yen. So it wouldn't be lonely I also grabbed a copy of the もっと脳を鍛える brain training software. 2500yen.

I had dinner at a Mexican restaurant and while I waited for my order I started playing with my new toy. Before I had even registered my name etc the DS Lite's magical powers began working. A waitress noticed the pristine whiteness of my new acquisition, came over to my table and started to chat about the brain training software. Nice work, DS Lite!

I gave the DS the once over, found my mental age (an embarassing 46. According to the software, the younger the better) and got the feel of the beast. The stylus works like a dream - and encourages neat writing. The interface was easy to understand. I fell in love. I'll review the software tomorrow but for now I just want to say that:
-having all the intructions in Japanese forces you to read, which is GOOD FOR YOU
-using the DS Lite is fun so I am likely to use it a lot, unlike some of my books....
-it is small enough to take anywhere, just don't put it in your back pocket and sit on it
-my kanji writing skills are going to take off
-it can also be used for other purposes, like playing games

Tags learning Japanese | kanji | Nintendo | DS Lite