Kanji Portraits -- and my own

Kanji Portraits is a great web site for identifying clumps of kanji with a common radical, and learning them in groups, which I think is easier.  For example, I recently went through a lot of kanji with 糸 (thread), 玄 (short thread), and 衤(collar).

It's in blog format, which makes little sense for that site (or this one?), so don't bother with page 1, but go to PREVIOUS POSTS AND SEARCH, which lists all the clumps they've done so far.

Meanwhile, partly with their help and Henshall's, I've come up with my own mnemonics that have the memorization of related kanji work together more.  I show this more because I think it's fun than because I think you'll want mine in particular.

The two shy brothers.  Here they are as a radical not used as its own kanji in Japanese: 㑒.  They're under their roof, with their heads together (maybe they're holding each other in fear?) and their topknots or hats are together.  They know a lot about horses, so we get 験 (test, examine).

What are they afraid of?  Whatever it is, they hide well:  their house is beyond a hill 険 (inaccessible place, steep, dangerous).  But someone is coming and sees their house through the trees 検 (investigate, inspect).  That person is the tax man, and they're too cheap to pay 倹 (frugal, thrifty).  What'll they do?  Uh-oh.  Look what they have behind their house: 剣 (sword).

The pot of baby limas.  Here it is with the lid, the bean, and "child" below showing it's a baby lima: 享 ; it translates as "enjoy."  Put it in a round 丸pot on a fire 灬and it'll be ready to eat: 熟 (boil, mature, ripen, complete).  You stuck it on the ground 土instead?  That's not how to cook beans!  Looks like you need extra schooling 塾 (cram school, private school).

It really wasn't that hard to come up with the stories; it was more work to find the groupings, which weren't in Kanji Portraits or Henshall.

Android tools

Struggling to get that Gospel of John thing going (previous post) I definitely found the need for some tools for the Android tablet.  Here's the best setup I can find.

rikaichan for Android (H/T Kanji Koohii Forum).  Forget rikaikun for Chrome; it doesn't seem to exist.  So I installed Firefox and rikaichan.  (Read the Koohii thread for installation instructions.)

It works beautifully.  I only have to touch and hold the character, and rikaichan figures out how much text, starting from there, to consider as part of the word it'll define for you.  If you weren't precise where you touched, use the arrow key to bump it left or right.  I keep bumping it to go through difficult sentences.

Google Japanese Input.  Turn off that horrible kana keyboard and use roumaji input just as you would on regular computer.  I'm not completely happy with it.  It's easy to get from Japanese to Roman input (touch a button at the lower left to toggle), but it's eliminated spelling suggestions for English, which is a pain.

John's still tough, because rikaichan, cool as it is, doesn't understand entire sentences; Google Translate does, but doesn't explain them.  But I'm getting further now.

次が何ですか？

(Please note:  the Japanese in these posts is likely to be horrible.  I am a beginner, after all, inviting whoever wants to come along.  If I don't polish these in accord with any suggestions in comments, I ain't dissin' you, honest.)

I have to read All Quiet on the Western Front, and was thinking I might do it in Japanese in Kindle format, waving mouse pointer over words I don't get for help.  That leads me to two problems:

1.  I don't have anything nearly as good as rikaikun for Android.  I was able to find Popup Japanese Dictionary (H/T LearnJapaneseOnline), but it's not as robust as rikaikun:  less likely to actually find an answer.

Now, I can just highlight text and Google will let me scroll to an option to Translate -- in Chrome.  It's not working in Pocket, and it's too much trouble even in Chrome.  うるさい.  (Rudeness warning on that last comment.)  Any ideas?

2.  I can't find anybody who'll give me an e- version of 西部戦線異状なし (All Quiet on the Western Front).  So it's moot.

What else?

How about the Gospel of John?

It shouldn't require a huge vocabulary.  Its sentence structure shouldn't be too 難しい.  It's bound to be free online.

And so it is.  (ヨハネ ... です。）

「初めに言があった」。OK, With Google's highlight and translate, and the web page's audio, I can get this.  Still a lot of work.  No way am I ready for 西部戦線異状なし.  Maybe I need that JLPT 4 reader I don't want to pay shipping on.

(Edit:  Someone did a few chapters of John in a video series, explaining the language point by point as Mangajin would.  I was pretty excited -- not so much after the first video.  The narrator's accent is like he's not even trying -- I think he'd agree -- and the explanations don't do anything rikaikun/rikaichan isn't giving me already.  No, that's not true:  rikaikun doesn't always know the right pronunciation for kanji, and this reader does.  Still.)

Trying to understand audio

本当に、I find it とても 難しい (very difficult) to process spoken Japanese.  It just goes right past my ears.  Sure, partly my vocabulary's too small, but it also seems like Japanese speakers go lightning fast.  Rosetta Stone was never like this -- if it had been I'd never have gotten through it!

Here are a couple of things I'm trying to train my ears.

Erin's Challenge:  the Japan Foundation's free beginner lessons.  Short video clips, with subtitles configurable for かな、ローマ字 (roumaji), and English translation; dramas with characters, demos of Japanese skills, and more.  They still talk way too fast for me, but I get some of it.

Crunchyroll:  I've been watching Lovely Muco!, an アニメ about Muco the hyper, loving dog and her saturnine owner.  The reason it's not losing me is that the dog's speech is subtitled in ひらがな, so I can pause it and puzzle out what's she's saying.  It helps that her thoughts and thus her words are pretty simple.  But, yes, she's way too fast, and the humans -- forget it.

Edit later:  just found a video of A Finnish Dude Speaking Japanese.  There's only one of it so far, but I can understand a lot of the words, more than in Muco.

Easy, easy reading, including ChokoChoko

I'm done with Rosetta, except for review (and helping my little boy, who's decided to play "that Japanese game").

I'm sick of my textbook.

I'm overwhelmed when I try to read チーズスイートホーム (Chi's Sweet Home) or listen to pretty much any audio or video.

Here are some things I've read so far.  They stretch me too much, but it's what I've got.

---

A few very short bits.  I've been able to find 4 little things to read from the now-defunct Great Chokochoko Library.  If anyone can find the rest, please let me know!  (Edit:  someone did!  All right!)  I had to look things up, but I could get through.  I especially liked the goldfish one.

金魚 (Goldfish) - 部屋 (The Room) - 走る名人 (Master Runner)
アルバイトをする (Working part-time)

Simple fairy tales at Wasabi -- Learn Japanese Online:  Jack and the Beanstalk, plus a few others.  It's easier than Tom Ray's Traditional Japanese Stories, which I intend to get to later.  Still a lot of looking at the vocab list.  I don't use the audio because it drives me crazy, but just read.  It's a nice feeling to get a complete sentence without struggling!  You'll need this phrase for all these fairy tales:  むかしむかし ("long ago" or "once upon a time").

But the truth is I need way more.  Any suggestions?  I'm thinking about writing my own -- but I'll need to get better at it first.  I'm guessing it'll be popular.

When I get stuck

Sometimes Google Translate can't interpret it, and jisho isn't clarifying it.  Should I really be pronouncing 人（ひと, hito, "person") "sh-to"?  When do I use から (from, since, because) and when do I use 以来 (いらい, irai, "since")?  What the heck does such-and-such sentence mean?  Here are the options I know so far:

1. A textbook, or grammar book.
2. Do an Internet search.  This works a lot.  Others have the same questions, and plenty have answered them.  You may well end up at Wasabi.  You'll get their articles in your Facebook feed if you Like their page there.
3. For 漢字 (かんじ, kanji), I often use Kanji alive, or Wiktionary.  (Googling a kanji will give you the right Wiktionary link.)
4. Reddit's /r/LearnJapanese, where you can ask random questions, and later answer some.
5. A native speaker.  I'm fortunate to have access to two.  (He told me, "Children sometimes pronounce 人 'sh-to.'  But their parents correct them."  If you disagree, OK, but I'm just the messenger.)
6. Japanese Language Stack Exchange.  But really I am not ready for that yet.  Its questions are too advanced for me -- so far.  (There's a question up about 以来.  Sure enough, I don't understand it.)

Anything I don't know about yet?  Please, post!