Japanese Talk

I'm blown away by this attitude of "treat people who can do things you can't with respect" and "everyone has their own strengths". More managers and executives should be like him.

For anyone that doesn't know, Satoru Iwata was one of the CEO of Nintendo until he passed away in 2015.

This book is a collection of his writings and a really interesting insight into the man. He mostly wrote about what it means to run a company and be a manager.

Japanese book "Iwata-san. Iwata-san wa gonna koto wo Hanashiteita"

Light blue book cover eoth trees and foxes on it.

The book I'm reading and its book cover.

How To Study Japanese with ADHD - Japanese Talk It can be difficult to study Japanese ADHD but it's not impossible. Here are techniques for when you struggle to focus or keep up the habit.

Currently using my "bounce" technique to study Korean, read a Japanese book, and write articles. Bouncing between each of these in hour-long slots.
jtalkonline.com/how-to-study...

Have you tried installing a Japanese keyboard? You can switch between them so you're not forced to permanently change.

You can get a keyboard to type the pronunciation and the kana will display.
help.nativshark.com/ask/set-up-j...

If you're a beginner though, then CureDolly YouTube videos are good at explaining grammar. As well as drilling verb and adjective conjugations.

The Best Way to Study Grammar for the JLPT - Japanese Talk Online I have found this to be the Best Way to Study Grammar for the JLPT! I've studied grammar a lot and couldn't remember complex grammar until now

I wouldn't say "easily" but I found combining drill books with Japanesetest4you explanations was really efficive for how my brain works.
jtalkonline.com/the-best-way...

That cover is AI slop. How can we trust the rest isn't? Such an insult to all the real illustrations.

@hackintimseeley.bsky.social

Pink plum blossoms

White plum blossoms

Closeup of white plum blossoms

Closeup of pink plum blossoms

Plum 梅(うめ ume 木 tree plus 毎 every) blossoms in Kyoto

Plumtrees bloom earlier than cherry blossom trees, and the blossoms are simpler, representing the traditional Japanese lifestyle more accurately compared to the frilly sakura 桜 (tree 木 woman 女 katakana tsu ツ)

#japan #kanji #japaneselanguage

This rant was brought to you because of the number of Japanese learning apps and games I keep seeing popup made by slop bros who don't actually know Japanese or how to teach it. (They get slop to write their code too, which always ends well.)

Long story short, if you're serious about language learning, use human made app, games, textbooks, videos, teachers, etc. And avoid the random slop generators.

Also there's no way to know if the translation is good for language learning! A translation changes depending on if the word/sentence is for a language learner or entertainment, etc.

This is the same for using AI to practice a language. You don't know if the information you're getting is accurate.

Language learning apps built on AI to learn a language is like this but turned up to 11. Apps are designed in English and then use AI to directly translate content into other languages. So you're not actually learning how natives would use that language, and there's a high chance the info is wrong.

If you've studied language for any given time you'll know that languages don't directly translate.

Beginners learn that "watashi" means "I" and "anata" means "you", but an app built on directly translating English (like Duolingo) doesn't teach you that Japanese people almost never use either.

Why is generative AI slop bad for language learning?

Because it's a RANDOM word generator!

Putting aside the theft/world burning ethical issues, LLMs are designed to pick the likelihood of a word based on the words that came before it. They're not designed to BE accurate but to SOUND accurate.

I don't see anything on the Kickstarter that says they don't use AI... And I'm a little sus at how they plan to make sure the languages are accurate.

Duolingo is terrible for language learning because it uses AI and uses the same info for all languages, instead of accurate info for each languages.

Are you using generative AI on this? I don't see anything that says you don't which make me a little suspicious. I also can't see anywhere on the page that says how you'll guarantee the languages will be accurate. Teachers? Translators? Or do you plan to use AI to just translate words randomly?

I would say, try something new? Maybe pick up a textbook on collocations or JLPT drills or something. Just something that exposes you to the information in a way that's very different from what you normally use.

On Bringing the Novels of Mizuki Tsujimura to English Readers As a literary translator who was born in Tokyo, raised in Los Angeles, and now ping-pongs between the two cities, I often find myself describing books (that I neither wrote nor translated) to reade…

It seems that in the last ten years this novel finally got a translation into English under "Lost Souls Meet Under a Full Moon", translated by Yuki Tejima.
lithub.com/on-bringing-...

10 Japanese Books by Women We’d Love to See in English When my fellow translators and I first got together to chat about ideas for the latest installment in this series, 10 Japanese works of fiction by women we’d love to see in English, we all had the …

This is a book I've been meaning to read for a very, VERY long time.

I first heard about it ten years ago in this 2016 article on untranslated Japanese novels by women, and picked it up from a second hand Japanese bookstore in Bellevue soon after. Glad I finally read it.
lithub.com/10-japanese-...

Japanese novel "Tsunagu" by Mizuki Tsujimura

Finish ツナグ by Mizuki Tsujimura. A series of vignettes about different people who meet a boy that connects them with someone who's passed away, ending with a chapter from the boy's perspective.

Not ground breaking, but really good writing that's easy to read. Good for N2 Japanese.

★★★☆☆

Translated by Bruce Allen!
#namethetranslator

Yeah. That's true, but that's what I mean by getting the information into your active memory, so you can use Japanese without looking. A teacher and textbook can help with that.

Or maybe instead of a textbook like Genki the Try grammar books would be better for you?

Every localizer I know is very much anti-AI, but yeah, publishers and translation companies trying to shove AI into everything is very annoying. Hope your Japanese studying goes well!

【公式】TVCM『ぽこポケ』のうた篇 30秒｜『ぽこ あ ポケモン』 YouTube video by ポケモン公式YouTubeチャンネル

As someone who has just started learning Japanese again properly, this Pokémon advert is like catnip.

ぽこ　ぽけ　ぽこ　ぽけ　ぽこあぽけもわ!

youtu.be/hmpVg2PyMOA?...

It's a lot of fun! The real difficult part is the grammar 😂 (But that's also fun.)

I feel like a lot of people focus on kanji because it's a concrete number, whereas grammar and vocabulary are a little more vague in terms of 'how much' you need to learn.

You get used to it. But that's one reason particules and kanji are great to learn, they help break up the sentences and make them resist to read.

How to Learn Japanese: The Ultimate Beginners Guide A guide to what you should know when you start learning Japanese, how to learn it, and some resources you can use to learn them!

But otherwise, here are some suggestions for resources for the beginner level.
jtalkonline.com/how-to-learn...

That's great! You probably have a lot of passive knowledge of the language, you just need to train your active memory and study the grammar. Your background should make it a lot easier.

I suggest working through a textbook with a teacher and making sure you know grammar and vocab.