Monday, December 31, 2007

Kanji trip, starting with the typical way, and ending with….?!

“3 years since I have started learning Japanese, and still learning the characters! How shame!”
Like this my friends think when I tell them that, but if they know which characters I’m learning I think they will appreciate my hard work!

Kanji! The Chinese characters, I never thought that I will be stuck in them like this!



After finishing the easy hiragana and katakana (as I see them now) I should move to the third part of the Japanese characters, The Kanji. The first characters were very easy and nice 山, 川, 田, 日, 月, 火, 水, 木, 金 (but actually this was a hard one for me, since I hadn’t met 疑 yet!).
At that time I realized that I have started the trip and I must finish it, but now I’m realizing that finishing it is not that easy!



I have used many ways to pass my way through kanji, first of all was the website http://www.thejapanesepage.com/ (S-chan, doumo arigatou!) This site was providing me with one kanji a day, and that was easy, I was printing a page everyday and study that kanji. I finished the first 100 kanji easily! (Not very easy! 後and 時 were making some troubles with me!!).

After finishing this, the website is no more providing me the kanji. So I searched for another website and I found the flash cards! They were nice but since I don’t like to study in front of the screen of computer, I like to write, to have papers scattered around me, pencils, eraser, pens. I tried to use the idea of making cards, so I made paper-made-of cards, and I paste them on the wall of my room. Of course, this way was not liked by my mother nor by my imouto Huda. Because my room became like a newspaper. Also this way didn’t make its effect of memorizing. So what i have done? Basically :“yamemashita”.



After a while I was introduced to the “kanji power” (K no A san, doumo arigatou!), it is very nice application but I faced the same problem, not-like to study in front of a screen. Also this application was having just 555 kanji.






So I just used the books provided to me by Japanese teachers (K-sensei S-sensei N-sensei, doumo arigatou!). In the first 500 kanji it worked well. But after preceding I start to face some problems; very complicated kanji, very similar to each other kanji, have many many readings kanji…. So I stopped for a while, actually I felt disappointed! I believed that for memorizing all these characters I need a computer mind. Computer mind?! ‘~_’~ Why I don’t try to make my mind like a computer? Yes, I need to “Organize” and “Design” my computer, I mean my mind! ( Dr. G.A. doumo arigatou!)

So, how about pipelining? 5-stages pipelining will be a good idea! I start by making a pipeline table:



And like this, it worked well until I found some hazards!
Data hazards were found! For example, I must memorize the kanji” 冬“before “終“.
Structural hazards also found! I couldn’t memorize 5 kanji in a day, my memory was very busy! (機、建、夏、張、疑)all in one day?! “musta7eel!!”
Control hazards also! Sometimes I had to jump to some group before another because it has some related kanji with what I have studied in the previous group. Like (勉) and (強).

I tried to solve these hazards:




For data hazards, I added a forwarding unit, and sometimes I needed to stall (flush cycles).






For structural hazard I decided to embed another memory in my head, (how?!)Of course it was just an inapplicable idea so I used stalling cycles (days).



I solved control hazards by jumps & flushing.




All these ways took a long time, so the throughput was not as I wish! So I decided to search for another way!
How about loop unrolling? Oh no, there are no loops here. Predictors! But kanji shapes are really unpredictable! Speculative execution? I’m sorry Tomasulo-hakase but your approach is more complicated than the kanji shape itself!
Multithreading? Multiprocessing? Caches?
Yes, maybe caches! But how? This needs me to hold the dictionary all the time, or to use Rikaichan tool always (k-chan doumo arigatou!).



And this also is inapplicable! Of course I can’t enter the nouryoku shiken with a dictionary in my hand!


Oh! I can’t find any way!! I’m really stuck!! really really!

皆さん、2000字を覚える方法がありませんか?教えてください!!
この“Kanji trip” を終えたいなー!! :(



8 comments:

Saemon 左衛門 said...

漢字はやっぱり邪魔です。

I tried almost everything you did, except the freaky IT stuff, I didn't understand it at all.

I used kanji power and learned some 300+ kanjis from it, and I used various textbooks to keep things fresh, but for 2kyuu I used kanji master 1000, but then I realized that I hate its guts.

My true friends in my kanji studies are my nintendo ds and 'kanji sonomama rakubiki jiten', and lately they were joined by 'otona no kanji renshuu ds' which was recommended to me in Japan.

Links:
http://www.nintendo.co.jp/ds/
http://www.nintendo.co.jp/ds/arjj/index.html
http://www.nowpro.co.jp/products/game/kanji/index.html

My two other real friends are my whiteboard on the wall and my smaller noteboard. I love them.

And the latest thing I'm using is a .pdf sheet with 2kyuu kanjis 5 Kanjis per page. The nice thing about it is that most of that each page has atleast 1 kanji I know, so this saves time and helps me revise older kanjis.

http://thejapanesepage.com/kanji/kanji/Level2KanjiList.pdf

It is 150 pages, so every 15 pages are 10%, If you do one page every two days, that's 10 months. If you do one page every day, that's 5 months. But you complained about 5 kanjis per day so I don't know how well this suits you.

Saemon 左衛門 said...

Also forgot to mention another thing: It really helps if you read japanese articles especially after a kanji studying session.

Try something that interests you. For me, I go to watch impress or famitsu.com.

Sometimes when I read articles after I study kanjis, I find the ones I studied and read them and this really helps in 'acquiring' the kanji.

Okay, after all this talk I think I will study kanji..

Amani AbuQdais أماني أبوقديس said...

:D
That was very enjoyable to read!!
The hazards part was incredible! LOOL!! reminds me of the computer architecture days.

Anyway, I think that there is no quick way to master kanji..(if it can be fully mastered to begin with)..
But i agree with Saemon san that reading articles is much more helpful in memorizing them and more useful to us as students as you can see the kanji in action..i mean you see how they are used + you know the meaning , instead of just studying them one by one. To convince you in your terms, you can call it more efficient.^^

For me, i try to read articles from time to time..whenever i face a "non-crackable" kanji, rikai chan will always be there! And i add it to my pocket-sized nihongo notebook if i find it a useful word.

Actually I enjoy reading/writing/studying/imagining kanji very much..so no matter how long it takes, i would never give up ^^
akemashite omedetou gozaimasu^^ kotoshi mo 4649~~~!!

momiji said...

Saemon san, kanji-chan, doumo arigatou! hontou ni tasukarimasu!
I will try all metohds you introduced me, and after finishing final exams i will make A BIG KANJI PARTY!!
I mean i will study kanji very well, maybe more than 10 kanji a day!! since i will have no other study to worry about:)
so just wait for a "kanji storm" after holiday!!
GANBARIMAAAAAAASU!!>O<
Oshougatsu wo Omedetou ne!

Amani AbuQdais أماني أبوقديس said...

hahaha! the same here! hisashiburi no kanji study. I have been concentrating on writing skills recently because i discovered that i have a non balanced ratio of kanji-to-writing skills. I knew a good amount of kanji without being able to do a good composition..so i stopped the kanji study for a while...back to kanji sooon! watch for my storm! :D ganbarimashou!

Saemon 左衛門 said...

Yes, yes, once, just after studying two new kanjis, I went to famitsu.com and a news story caught my interest, and it had both kanjis in it, so they 'stuck'. You have no idea how much of a morale boost this was to me!

As for me, well, luckily, since returning from Japan, I've been sending and receiving lots and lots of e-mails in Japanese, so my writing skills improved quite a bit. I think I'm in the early stages of developing a sense for what's 'fushizen' in speech and writing. I'll focus on Kanjis now. By summer 2008, I aim to have more than a 1000 kanjis under my belt. Bi ithin Allah.

minna isshoni ganbarimashou!

Thanks Momiji for a much needed post.

momiji said...

mina san, you r really incouraging me, thank you very much:)
I thought memorizing kanji is "Ncomplete problem"! (in algorithms term)
But because of you i think i will make it possible!
Ganbarou ne!!
even though, 3 kanji storms wa kowai ne!!~_^

wait for the next post, i will try to write it in japanese!!

Amani AbuQdais أماني أبوقديس said...

tanoshimi ni shiteimasu! :)