Tae Kim’s Blog

With working on a fairly large project and team (at least for me), moving to a new place, and taking online classes, these last few months have been quite hectic indeed. I’ve moved all my stuff over to the new place (though there’s still unopened boxes everywhere), the project is slowing down, and my online class ends in December, so hopefully in a month or so I’ll finally have some time to devote to Japanese, Chinese, and maybe even relax a little.

If any of you played Sims 2, the accuracy of the game in simulating real life is amazing (and maybe depressing depending on which way you look at it). Depending on your personality and interests, you have a bunch of needs shown in bars that have to be balanced and maintained given a finite amount of time. You also have to maintain your relationships with the people in your life and meet their needs. In these last few months, due to the increasing demand of some of my other bars, my language study, personal projects, diet, and exercise bars have been sorely neglected.

My beer belly, which I just reduced to reasonable levels has come back with a vengeance. In regards to my Chinese and Japanese, while there was certainly no improvement in the least bit, I managed to at least maintain my skills without forgetting too much. Japanese comes back with a little bit of practice and it’s hard to know even less Chinese than what little I started with.

I can appreciate why learning a new language is so difficult for working adults. The basic problem isn’t that the language is hard, it’s just the volume of everything you have to learn (basically, how to express everything you know and understand everybody else). I can conclude from personal experience that the biggest single difficulty of learning a new language for adults with a career, bills, relationships, and responsibilities is the lack of time. I can’t even imagine how difficult it would be if I had kids and a family to care for.

I didn’t know how good I had it in college. I didn’t have to go grocery shopping, run errands, and spend 40 hours a week sitting in a cubicle. I also had easy access to native speakers and teachers on campus without having to drive around and several months a year with absolutely nothing to do. Nothing motivates studying like being bored out of your mind.

So don’t tell me I can master a language by working on it 24×7 and surrounding myself with the language all day because some of us have a life that demands our attention. Also just as impractical is the suggestion to pick up, leave everything I have built up here, and move to that country. Finding a job in a foreign country to learn the native language is one huge Catch-22. You can’t get a good job if you can’t speak the language and you can’t move there to learn the language if you can’t find a good job. And I’m not keen on taking a 2/3 pay cut to switch from my current job to teaching English.

All of those suggestions are great when you’re a student or just starting out as a fresh graduate and I did exactly that with Japanese. However, as I approach 27(!!!), that window of opportunity is closing and I don’t have a similar route for learning Chinese. And once I have kids to take care of, that window can be considered officially closed, locked, and bolted on both sides.

By the way, this is my way of saying to those of you still young to not squander your chance. Learn a foreign language and live abroad while you still can! It’s really going to change your life and mostly all in a good way!

So what’s the solution for learning a language while juggling all the other stuff going on? I don’t know but I’m just going to take it a little-by-little. I know how much work is involved from learning Japanese so I don’t get easily discouraged and take pride in every little improvement. And even though my Chinese is still unusable in a regular conversation, it’s still vastly improved from a year or two ago and I’m happy with that. I think that’s the most important ingredient. Be persistent and don’t worry about when you’re going to “master” everything. That’s a relatively loose term anyway since nobody ever completely “masters” a language. So don’t stress about why it’s taking so long and feel discouraged by what seems like a lack of progress. Just enjoy the journey and the people you’ll meet along the way, however long the road may be. And if you persevere and keep on the lookout, you’ll eventually find some new opportunities opening for you. At least I’m hoping that’s the case for me.

It’s election day. If you’re not rich like most of us, you should be voting for Obama. But I’m guessing most US citizens who read this blog will vote for Obama anyhow so I guess I’m preaching to the choir.

Personally, I wish Ron Paul could have been president. Oh well…

An interesting post I read recently about 「多い」 and 「少ない」 got me thinking (probably a bit too much). The post is also all in Japanese, so it’s good reading practice as well.

As Minako Okamoto points out, you can’t directly modify a noun with 「多い」 and 「少ない」 in the manner below.

東京に多いレストランがある

I believe this is due to the idiosyncrasy of having adjectives that indicate multiple objects in a language that has no singular/plural distinction. (I have another post that explores this theme in depth that has been in my draft folder forever.) In addition, other words that indicates multiple objects such as 「少数」 and 「多数」 are almost always used as nouns despite the fact that they are descriptive and would normally be thought of as adjectives. (I have no idea whether they are officially classified as just nouns or as both nouns and na-adjectives.)

The easy way

There are many ways to get around this problem of not being able to directly modify the noun with adjectives indication amounts. For instance, you can make the adjective a predicate or use adverbs such as 「たくさん」 and 「少し」 instead as Minako demonstrates.

東京にレストランが多い。
東京にレストランがたくさんある。

The not-as-easy way

While this works fine for elementary Japanese, more complicated sentences might call for a direct noun modification. This is especially the case when the main focus of the sentence is something else and the fact that it’s numerous or few in number is extraneous information. In order to do this, all you have to do is modify as a noun using 「の」 instead of the traditional adjective-noun modification. For i-adjectives, you have to convert it to an adverb first by replacing 「い」 with 「く」.

東京では、多くのレストランが完全禁煙の制度を実施し始めている。
(I completely made this example up so I have no idea if this is true and I would guess probably not.)

Oddly enough, I have never seen the opposite 「少なくの」. I guess every language has its quirks. You can however, use 「少数の」 instead.

80対20の法則によると、少数のバグが大多数の問題の原因となる。

KISS (Keep it simple, stupid!)

Some people might look down on what I called “elementary” earlier but in languages, simpler is always better. So in most cases and especially in conversational Japanese, you should just stick to the simpler method of using words like 「たくさん」 and 「少し」 without mucking around with what is more of a formal written style using 「多くの」, etc.

I should also note that there is a big difference between a direct noun modification and a subordinate clause modification as the two examples below show.

１）　東京に多いレストランがある。
２）　レストランが多い東京が好きだ。

Unlike the first sentence where 「多い」 is directly modifying 「レストラン」, the second sentence is perfectly fine because 「多い」 is the predicate in the clause 「レストランが多い」 and is not directly modifying the noun 「東京」 by itself.

So in most cases, if you stick to the basics, there should be no problem at all. In fact, I have personally never noticed this peculiar problem until I consciously thought about it. In conclusion, remember that “brevity is the soul of wit”!

Can anybody think of any other adjectives that have similar issues?

Life continues to be hectic and updates to this blog will be sparse probably till the end of this year.

I had wanted to write a post with a comprehensive review of the Death Note comic book series with transcribed excerpts but since that takes time, I’ll just leave you with a hilarious comic strip from VG Cats. Lots of funny stuff there including references to どうぶつの森.

In any case, the short version of my review is to definitely check it out as a resource for studying Japanese. There’s a lot of text compared to most comic books and the story is very complex. Definitely a good read for people at an intermediate to advanced levels.

Image from VG Cats:

お待ちかね！

For my portion, let’s quickly discuss the phrase I just used to give you an idea of how Japanese grammar is like onion filled with layers of teary-eyed, nutritious, and flavorful goodness. The phrase 「お待ちかね」 is used to express something that you’ve been waiting for a long time. The first grammar here is the use of 「かねる」 attached to the stem of the verb. You can read more about it here but it’s used when you can’t do something. So if you can do it, you have to actually use the negative 「かねない」 in a weird and confusing double negative fashion. So 「待ちかねる」 means you can’t wait for it. Now, you just drop the 「る」 off the verb 「かねる」 for the verb stem and make it a noun. Finally, all you need for the cherry on top is the honorific 「お」 to give it that special and oh-so-tasty honorific flavor. And there you have it! Your long awaited September Matsuri.

どうぞ！

No time for commentaries so I’ll just give you the links and add them later!
Update: My smart-alec commentaries are up.

Peter wrote about Reading Japanese for Fun.
Hey Peter, for Rule 0, there’s another grammar resource out there that I think might be useful. (Hint: look at the address bar in your browser)

Glowing Face Man wrote about conditionals in English and Japanese and some stuff about Buddhism.
Some of the Japanese examples are a bit awkward but it’s still interesting to think of conditionals in English being more than just using the word “if”. As for the second post, a lot of very interesting stuff there. In my opinion, Japanese HAS a future tense and the present tense is very often misunderstood. Good luck with Chinese, it’s a real pain in the ass!

Shane wrote about handy kanji for travelers.
Might wanna mention that 人 can be deceptively similar to 入 for those unfamiliar with Kanji!

Liv wrote about the daily struggles of trying to learn the seemingly impenetrable language of the country you live in.
I can speak Japanese but I still pretended I couldn’t when the NHK guy came knocking by.
Girlfriend: “Hey Hunny, it’s the NHK guy.”
Me: “Just tell him we have no idea what he’s saying.”

Andrew wrote about Heisig’s Remembering the Kanji (ugh).
Andrew, you get a Tae Kim “ugh” (TM) for sending me the link while knowing Heisig and I are mortal enemies.
But seriously, I agree with component analysis and imaginative memory though not necessary the way Heisig recommends. I still hate flash cards with a passion and don’t recall Heisig ever mentioning them either.

Tony wrote about the changes in Japanese recently.
What, you don’t like words like カンニング, Tony? All we have to do is recycle the Japanese version back into English like “Pokemon” in a vicious cycle! Yeah! Did you cunning on the test, Billy?

Nick wrote about foreign names in Japanese.
Hey Nick, at least you didn’t have to deal with a Korean name converted to English converted to Japanese!

Jamaipanese wrote a entry called Learning Japanese is complicated but not difficult.
Whatever works man… whatever works.

Mizuumi wrote a bilingual Polish/English entry on techniques for learning Kanji.
When I can’t remember a kanji for the 100th time, I do a dance of rage and frustration. I don’t know if it helps.

Ken wrote about poorly-understood job titles.
What the hell does a fellow do? I don’t understand the English!

Deas wrote about “PC” in Japan.
I move to create a new word for wives that go out all the time and spend all your money: 家外, ironically the same reading as 加害. What? Not “PC” enough?

Thanks everybody for the great submissions!

Deas at Rocking in Hakata is apparently hosting next month’s Matsuri.

「それどころじゃない」 is one of those strange phrases whose meaning isn’t obvious by the words themselves. I guess those things are called idioms, a word that looks suspiciously similar to “idiot” as in “only an idiot wouldn’t know what it meant”. Well excuse me but we’re not all native speakers, you know.

In any case, I thought of this expression when I contemplated updating my blog. My life is rather hectic right now so updating my blog is the least of my concerns. So here I am, in the ultimate of ironies, updating my blog to talk about a phrase that perfectly expresses how I can’t update my blog.

You: 最近、ブログを更新してないね。
Me: それどころじゃないんだよ！

However, I will post all your submissions for September’s Blog Matsuri sometime near the end of this week. There’s still time to write and submit something to me! Just email me at taekim.japanese AT gmail.com

Hey guys, you have only 1 week left to submit your Japan+Language related blog entries to me! So far, I’ve received 1 relevant submission.

See here for details or just email me a link to your post at taekim.japanese AT gmail.com.

Maybe I picked a bad topic… I hope this month’s Japan Matsuri doesn’t end in complete failure due to my incompetence and lack of audience. いかん！前向きにならなきゃ。

みなさんの投稿をお待ちしております！m(*^＿^*)m よろしく

Staring from the beginning of this month, ChinesePod and other podcast sites run by Praxis Languages stopped offering access to all podcasts for non-paying members except for the Newbie level. I had not intended to write anything about it because how they decide to make revenue to sustain their business is none of my business and something they would know much better about. However, after seeing how they actually implemented the changes, I feel like I need to say something because I actually care about ChinesePod and its continued success/existence (especially if they’re going to introduce JapanesePod). It might be better to email them directly and I might do that but for now I’m putting up my thoughts here for everybody to see and to keep it separate from the very long discussions that are already going on at the site itself.

A personal perspective

First of all, I have to fess up to say that I’m not a paying subscriber and have never really gotten involved in the comments or discussions on the site. The simple reason for this is because I am studying Chinese rather passively and very slowly. I even stop studying altogether for long periods of time and while their slogan is, “Learn Chinese on Your Terms”, you can never really stop studying their material without feeling like you’re wasting money. In addition, I’m not much of a subscriber of anything outside of essential or near-essential services such as electricity and my cell phone. I prefer to buy things to own and I have bought several books on learning Chinese, some comic books, and a very expensive electronic dictionary. I would certainly consider buying a DVD of the lessons, grammar points, and transcripts in a good quality print. However, my major problem right now is time and to a certain degree interest and necessity not a lack of resources.

Basically, I’m just not part of their target market demographic. But really, my personal circumstances are irrelevant in relation to their business model as a whole and I bring it up here just to separate my personal view from my analysis of their decision in general.

An objective/business perspective

From a business perspective, there are several revenue models Praxis could have gone with.

1. Advertising (including marketing actual goods and affiliate partnerships)
2. Pay by usage
3. Subscription

As for the first option, I don’t think general ad revenue is really sustainable in the market of language learning. I highly doubt you can keep an outfit like ChinesePod going without a significantly large audience. And based on my personal site statistics, language learning is not a big enough market for general ads as compared to classifieds and news sites.

However, an interesting idea is to use advertising as marketing for their own products such as printed transcripts, language software, and lesson DVDs. Unfortunately, production and distribution costs are a large problem and again in a small market such as foreign language learning, I see this as an option for boosting revenues but not viable for running a whole company. In addition, I think the people at ChinesePod want to be more innovative than just selling static and stale physical goods like Rosetta Stone.

The second model of paying for what you use would certainly appeal to me more but wouldn’t have worked when they just started out, since they didn’t have anything. It’s also a much bigger hassle to keep track of who payed for what so I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it. They could maybe sell the podcasts as songs in iTunes but that ties them to Apple’s platform and I’m pretty sure they want people to visit the site, not just get everything form iTunes.

So while people may suggest some other ways to make money while keeping things free, I think ChinesePod has gone with the only model that really makes sense for what they’re doing. Obviously, if the accounting books say they need to close some stuff off for non-paying users to motivate them to subscribe, that’s their business. However, the details in how they decided to go about it seems… to put it politely, misguided.

Suggestions

The first problem is they went with the bait-and-switch and nobody likes to be treated like a fish. When I design and develop features or upgrades in software, as a general rule, I never take features away. If you don’t think you can maintain or support the features in the long-term, you should never give it to them in the first place. In the software/SaaS world, people would rather not have something in the first place than have it taken away from them. In this case, ignorance really is bliss.

They already gave away all the lessons up to now anyway. They should have started closing access to the new lesson only. Especially in the digital world, once you open Pandora’s box, you can never get it back in. So I see no point in trying to close off all the old lessons, when all somebody has to do is release a torrent with all the old files anyway. People who don’t want to pay won’t, no matter what you try to do. I hate to say this, but in this case JapanesePod101 has made the right decision in releasing Premium subscriber-only lessons incrementally.

If the argument is really about focusing on providing more for the paying customers, then prove it by releasing new stuff only for them that makes non-subscribers want to join. Right now, it just sounds like vague promises and nobody can deny that they’re now providing far less, no matter how you try to dress up the situation.

The second major problem is not only did they take away the podcast audio, they closed the comments to non-paying members. BIG MISTAKE. I’m not too familiar with the community features since I don’t participate, but I have never seen a paying community take off. In fact, I think that’s almost an oxymoron. The idea that you have to pay to discuss things with other people online is just ridiculous. Non-paying members won’t have access to the lesson anyway, why block other people such as native Chinese speakers from answering the questions and comments by paying members, with the understanding that they haven’t heard the actual podcast? In fact, native Chinese speakers probably didn’t waste their time listening to the podcasts anyway ever. Really, I’d rather not waste my time discussing things with other clueless paying members if that’s the only people that can respond.

It will be interesting to see what this effect will have on the community around ChinesePod. In my opinion, it will be devastating and irreversible pretty soon. The clock is ticking. Reopen all the community features for everybody before it’s too late!

Again, I’m not saying their decision is right or wrong, I’m just saying that some of the details in the change is not what I would call good business sense.

A short post today since real life is starting to be more demanding and clamoring for attention.

Today, I learned a new word: 【準える】

I’m always surprised to see a completely new word based on a Kanji that I’ve probably known for well over 6 years. 「準備」 was probably one of the first few words I learned with Kanji (it helped that the same word in Korean sounds identical). I later picked up other words such as 「基準」、「水準」、「標準」、and 「準決勝」. Later on, I even picked up more advanced vocabulary such as 「準じる」 and the older style: 「準ずる」. And now, after over 8 years since I started studying Japanese, I just learned a completely different word based on the same Kanji.

Another similar example happened to me several years ago with 「集う」, which as far as I can tell is virtually identical to 「集まる」 except used like almost never. At that time, I came upon the word at a local community event at 「川口市」 called 「新年の集い」.

The moral of the story is: don’t worry about learning everything about a given Kanji at once. Relax, give it time, and learn things in context as you go. And whatever you do, DO NOT try to remember all the readings at once. You’ll eventually get to all the various readings and associated vocabulary in time. It might take over 8 years but hey, I’ve been using Japanese happily all these years without knowing 「準える」 precisely because it’s so rare to see it used anywhere.

As an interesting aside, 「なずらえる」 seems to have 3 possible kanji: 「準える・准える・擬える」 but the 「なぞらえる」 reading seems to only accept 「準える」. Probably a modern upgrade, as indicated by older usage of 「ず」 (similar to 「生ずる」、「準ずる」、etc).

Can anyone explain to me the difference between 在 and 着? I looked online to no avail. Here are the differences that I came up with. However, I have no idea if they’re correct and I’m sure I’m missing a whole bunch of other usages.

1. 在 can be used to indicate location, 着 can’t.
   Ex: 我住在美国。
2. 在 is used for a continuous action.
   Ex: 他在打电话。
3. 着 is used for a one-time action that changes a state and remains in that state.
   Ex: 她手里拿着一本书。

The best I can figure out is that 着 is not actually an action but a description of a state resulting from the action, which explains why it comes after the verb. For instance, 下着雨 describes the condition as being rainy. This explains why dict.cn translates it as “rainily” which I don’t think is even a word. On the other hand, 在下雨 is the continuous action of rain falling. That’s why you can have what at first seems to be a crazy duplication such as 雨还在下着. It makes sense when you consider that it’s a continuous action of the “rainily” condition.

Yeah, no wonder I hate Chinese grammar. Next, I’ll try to figure out the difference between 一点 and 一些. Ow, my poor head!