Fremdsprachen ftfw, Foreign Languages Thread Options

[Dr Strum]

Я не работаю завтра, так я хочу говорить по–русски, по–немецки, по–японски, по–испански...
Не знаю, если это был хорошая идея... т.е. я не понимаю много языки, потему что, я учился их так кратко.


Essentially, this topic is for foreign languages. For practicing foreign languages, discussing them, getting help with them, etc. Foreign language meaning it's not English, since this is an English site. Even if non-English might happen to be your native language.

[Dr Strum]

Well, the best way to memorize anything is to associate as much information with it as you can. I know in my Japanese textbooks (I used Genki I for my class this past year, and downloaded Genki II) most of the kanji, well, you're long familiar with the pronunciations of the word, and have seen the book use the kanji (with furigana) before it ever introduces you to the kanji itself.
Then in the workbook you have to write it out two dozen times, do grammatical exercises using the kanji, etc.

Essentially, do these things to remember:
-Write it out a million times, and practice it as well in sentences.
-Associate it with as many things as you can (example, 話 usually written 話す and meaning "to speak", usually pronounced はなす, contains the same radical as 言 "to say" which has the same radical 口 "mouth"; you've got a shitton of information here, relating three kanji to the original one you wanted to memorize, and could add more; as a verb you could practice conjugations with it [something really necessary with irregular verbs in which the pronunciation hidden within the kanji can change with conjugation]).
-Attach it to visual imagery. The human mind is a visual mind, so if you can attach a picture to it, you can remember it much more easily (especially since it ends up stored in two different sections of the mind; this is how the Rosetta Stone software works, it shows you a picture of a cat with the text 猫; unfortunately the Rosetta Stone software really fails when it comes to teaching grammar).

Also, in all these things, how important you make the word changes how easily the word is remembered, because humans only remember things that matter. Hence why it's so easy for us to remember our own phone numbers - both because we repeat it over and over, and because it's something we usually need to remember.