“Spaced repetition” for learning japanese September 28, 2006
Posted by winden in in real life, japanese.add a comment
So having been grounded at home since yesterday evening with high fevers… I had to cancel my japanese class today :( since anyways I can not really concentrate on anything. So, instead of my usual rehearsal for japanese, I’ve been wandering internet and stumbled upon this Spaced repetition term… now the sound of that page is somehow too good to be true, but maybe it works? I dunno, would have to spend a bit of time researching it before I commit to really using it for my japanese learning, although most probably it’s better than my random “i wanna rehearse that today” system ^_^
Learning to read japanese reminds me of learning to read math September 12, 2006
Posted by winden in coding, japanese.1 comment so far
Meta-info 1: I was studying “math major” at university.
Meta-info 2: I have yet to find out if unicode has proper math symbols.
So I goto my first math class at univ. together with leunam (who had entered math univ. one year before), and we sit at some random place. Enter stage left a young but strict looking female teacher and after some pleasanteries…
teacher: This being math analysis (the one where you learn to do weird symbolic integrals, symbolic power series and lotsa greek letters in both cases), I will now write most of the math symbols we are going to need (she always used scientific-speak at class of course) opposite their translation
winden (whispering): leunam, this is when we get to learn “for-every” and such like symbols?
leunam: just wait and see
winden: yeah
teacher: *write* *write* *write* *write* *write* …
winden: holy crap i can’t keep up
leunam: told you so, to wait and see
teacher: *write* *write* *write* *write* *write* *write* …
chalkboard: *error no space left on device*
teacher: *goto chalkboard 2* *write* *write* *write* *write* *write* … *goto chalkboard 3* *write* *write* …
winden: I just can’t keep up on somewhat writting them down, much less writting them with proper form… we really have to learn all these symbols?!?!?!
leunam: hehe
teacher: Can I erase the first chalkboard? *waits 3 secs* *erase* *write* *write* *write* …
winden: Can’t believe how fast she’s writting while maintaing goodlooking symbols!!! (i have always been keen on font desings)
leunam: Don’t despair winden of network
[end of “ohhh i remeber when i as young and wawawa”-mode]
What does this story have in common with japanese? You see, japanese has different symbols for writing than latin-derived languages, so learning entails not only pronunciation and associating sounds with ideas, but also the combo of sound with ideas with symbols, just like when learning to write in math-speak “for-every n belonging-to naturals with n greater-than 0, exists some m belonging-to naturals with n being less-than m” (this definition of infinite-ness of the natural numbers is hereby provided free of charge ^^).
(fixed: found out how to cast the math-with-unicode spell: “∀n∈ℕ|n>0, ∃m∈ℕ|n<m”
hiragana numbers are inside September 11, 2006
Posted by winden in japanese.add a comment
And just a while ago I managed to learn to write numbers w/ hiragana characters… yeah japanese category has just been added ;)
ps. anyone knows how to input “small characters”? I mean when you write 9 == KI-yu-U, you should write the “yu” part smaller and somewhat inside the “KI”, but no way to find out yet…
Holly crap I can decode a bit of japanese now ^^ September 10, 2006
Posted by winden in japanese.add a comment
So I was watching some random youtube japanese commercial and upon the cute girl getting her score, I was able to decode あなたの on the fly (hiragana “anata no” ==> you + possesive particle).
(may end up getting a new japanese category at the blog mind you)
Funny things you find at the public baths September 9, 2006
Posted by winden in demoscene, in real life.add a comment
So I was looking at some post from sole^xplsv^ppg about bath literature… and was fast reminded to 1997, where one day I stumpled into a groups greetings list scribbled on a bathroom stall wall while at the university… later on, asking leunam provided the original troublemaker for this obvious defacing of unversity campus property ;)
[enter geek mode] What I can’t bit worry about is that the periodic cleaning up is erasing traces of scene history, since you can easily pinpoint the date of a greeting list depending on the issuer and receivers of the greetings, sort of like examining dirt with geology tech to find out dates of fossils [exit geek mode]
The software rendering world 