Learning to Read and Write Kanji Row 21

As with other posts in this series, this is the results of a test I took today, July 12th, 2021.

kanji test row 21

港 風 園 会 春 公 窓 係 午 道 昨 金 関 曇 習 才 存 雪 夏 台 冬 妹 秋 暑 遠 練 分 晴 後 辞

I started doing an extra test each day to keep up my retention. Starting at low rows is going to make this pretty easy until I get up to the high levels.

  • Row 2 Test July 11, 2021 100%
    山 中 行 安 大 川 十 来 六 田 分 四 五 本 万 二 千 語 円 小 日 百 高
  • Row 3 Test July 12, 2021 100%
    二 赤 黒 来 川 少 英 人 中 田 車 白 七 青 万 本 見 同 何 和 雨 国 円

This row is different than any other that I have posted. Can you tell? Two of the ones I got wrong were from this row. I decided to accept 関係 being wrong, since they are pretty easy kanji, I just didn't think to add them to the list of kanji to remember. I used the mind palace technique which is pretty effective for the kanji I learned last night, which means I can add 関係 to the mind palace for tomorrow and consider this row to be done when I add the two to tomorrow's test. Since I normally don't do tests on the first day, this will be a special test. How long did this row take? I did practice on July 10, test on July 11, test today, and I'll practice row 22 tomorrow, so 3 days. This is faster than previous rows. It has something to do with the ease of this row and something to do with the method.

Besides getting 関係 wrong, I got 4 wrong from previous rows. For I drew which is a common mistake I make. At least I didn't draw . I missed which is one I should know. I thought but I just went through the whole thing about 通り being avenue, not road-way. I got wrong and even got the reading wrong. It should be ぞん as in 存じる [ぞんじる] /(v1) (hum) to think, feel, consider, know, etc./(P)/. Also, 存分 [ぞんぶん] /(adj-na,adv,n) to one's heart's content/as much as one wants/(P)/. Lastly I forgot . I knew there was something like ム in it and I knew there was the left hand side radical, and I knew there was a table, but I couldn't put it together. Such is remembering kanji. This one I know really really well, too. It just goes to show that the brain is doing it's best and sometimes that is not going to result in a correct draw.

I have been doing a lot of JapanesePod101.com recently, trying to do 4 lessons per day, which is double what they recommend. My results on their difficult tests are less than spectacular because I'm not putting a lot of effort into learning. That's going to change, but how much effort can I put into one class? The answer is: hours. Until I improve on tests, I'm going to need to put in the time. This is a good example of teaching in the 21st century. Instead of a two disc CD with a book to learn a language (like we did in the early 21st century and most of the last decades of the 20th century), I have 127 lessons at level 2 (the level I am in grammar) and 99 lessons at level 3 (the level I am in vocabulary and kanji). Assuming each lesson is about 15 minutes long (a bunch are shorter, but we'll assume that each short lesson requires 15 minutes of homework), that means that there are 56 hours of lessons in just these two levels. After 56 hours of learning, we find ourselves in level 4 which has 24 hours of audio in 100 lessons. After level 4 is level 5 which has 22 hours of audio in 183 lessons. Assuming someone is doing 1 hour per day plus whatever is necessary for the quizzes, assignments, and tests, this site will provide incredible training in 102 days, which is only 3 months and 12 days. So why would someone buy a 6 month subscription? Well, there's no reason to go at 1 hour per day. They recommend 30 minutes per day. Assuming burnout and life don't derail me, this seems like a really good lesson. Because the podcasts are downloadable, it's easily worth the cost. It's pretty difficult to compare this because it's a few minutes of Japanese audio translated with text and a long discussion after. I've noticed that some videos have video vocabulary, which is a little weird but is also worthwhile for those learning vocabulary.

Yesterday I swam. It was glorious. I wish I could swim more. Maybe I can swim indoors somewhere this fall, winter, and spring. I'm definitely going back a few times before summer ends and I'll go next summer too. 1) It's free 2) it's wonderful to be enveloped in water 3) it's quick 4) it's an action that makes a person into a swimmer.

So... What did my mind palace look like? Well... まどかぜはるなつれんしゅう (or in romanji mado kaze haru natsu renshuu, or in English window wind spring summer practice learn). and then I remembered each kanji's components in order of drawing: 空ム心一虫雨ヨ一ノ二日一自夂糸東羽白 (in hiragana: そらムしんいちむしあめヨいちノにひいちじ?いとひがしはしろ, romanji: sora mu shin ichi mushi ame yo ichi no ni hi ichi ji ?? ito higashi ha shiro, and English: sky mu heart one insect rain yo one no two day one self table thread east feather white). With a little bit of python, I was able to figure out that the size of this bit of information (the radicals, not the hiragana) is 54 bytes (utf-8 is actually smaller than zlib compressed version). 54 bytes is 432 bits, which is a gigantic amount of information. Compare to a 13 letter password, which is at most 91 bits. This kanji test proved that not only could I reproduce it, I could reproduce it given the English translations in arbitrary order (window wind spring summer practice learn). So that is approximately what this exercise is. I also have to learn the reading (the hiragana) and be able to recognize the kanji so that I can translate things I read. So far my recognition of kanji has been superb. The only ones I struggle on are weird ones. Wouldn't it be nice to have a list of weird kanji?

What else? Too much. I'm reading Ready Player Two, which I have learned suffers from very bad reviews. I enjoyed Ready Player One a lot, so I feel like it deserves a chance. I've been thinking about the Semantic Web idea. It's difficult to get people to work together, but the way that browsers are supporting a lot of things I thought difficult (PDF in JS, DNS over HTTPS, WASM, Canvas, DRM, H.264, AV1, WebM, Theora, FLAC) means that we could indeed just write the code and release it. But what does it mean to support the symantic web? Perhaps if I wanted to, I could describe this page in XML so that a person could get a quick summary. I'm already tagging, which I would use in semantic web, but I am a bit lazy on that front. Let's get back to work.

Until next time!

I'll hopefully post all tests as I pass them. Wish me luck.

Previous episodes:
Learning to Read and Write Kanji
Learning to Read and Write Kanji Row 5
Learning to Read and Write Kanji Row 6
Learning to Read and Write Kanji Row 7
Learning to Read and Write Kanji Row 8
Learning to Read and Write Kanji Row 9
Learning to Read and Write Kanji Row 10
Learning to Read and Write Kanji Row 11
Learning to Read and Write Kanji Row 12
Learning to Read and Write Kanji Row 13
Learning to Read and Write Kanji Row 14
Learning to Read and Write Kanji Row 15
Learning to Read and Write Kanji Row 16
Learning to Read and Write Kanji Row 17
Learning to Read and Write Kanji Row 18
Learning to Read and Write Kanji Row 19
Learning to Read and Write Kanji Row 20

Javantea out.

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