Incomplete thoughts and sentences happen in your native tongue too

Deal the Zeal : Enthusiasm and its effects on second language Acquisition
Goals for Japanese Fluency
By Makurasuki Sensei, Brett McCluskey

This article was created to help those that need a boost to start or re-continue there quest for the acquisition and mastery of Japanese unto fluency.

You can improve your Japanese by following a few techniques I will show you and briefly outline here. In no time your Japanese speaking skills will be better than you ever thought possible. Your success in second language acquisition should you accept the challenge, will be dependant upon the commitments you make to yourself to memorizing words part1, understanding, learning, memorizing then applying the basic Japanese grammar principlespart3+4 and finally your total amount of zeal you put into your efforts. The amount of success or failure you have in second language acquisition starts with you. The power is within you, now lets try to unlock
I want to share with you my zeal for learning another language and perhaps you might catch a little part of it and it might burn like the California fires of 2007 until you too have inspired others through your zeal and mastery of a foreign language. My roommates hated me when I was studying, because not only would I ask them to help me by quizzing me from my vocabulary list from which I studied without fail daily, but I would wake up very early in the morning to practice speaking Japanese. I would repeat sentences I learned like mantras until I got the chance to use what I learned in real life to see which ones actually worked. My roommates hated me. I had zeal for learning Japanese. It takes a great bit of it to be a successful language learner. You MUST HAVE ZEAL for learning the language or you will become complacent and lazy. Determine within yourself now that you will find a way to harness zeal and enthusiasm towards the improvement of your Japanese unto acquisition. You must also have a purpose for your zeal. My purpose was to be able to speak with the Japanese people themselves, to communicate with them with no impediments of speech. Like they say Quitters Never Win, and Winners Never Quit. So get going now and find your purpose and zeal it up.
The following is just one way and one example of what kind of language goals a person could set and realistically achieve, while at the same time making it challenging enough to maintain their interest. You might emulate these goals if you were learning Japanese, they are modeled after my own goals. They are in no way the only way to go, but they are, as I said, just one set of possible goals that tha you can use to help you attain fluency. They helped me acquire that ever elusive second language (Japanese) and if they are couple wth enough zeal it will be very possible that they will help you get fluency too. Remember though, the amount of zeal you put into your work is exactly how much success you will achieve out of it. With the right amount of zeal, you are bound to be speaking native like a Japanese senator in no time flat. May your Nihongo wa jozu ni naru.

It has been said to be fluent a person must know a minimum 4000 words

Vocabulary –n. a list of words, and often phrases, abbreviations, inflectional forms, etc., usually arranged in alphabetical order and defined or otherwise identified as in a dictionary, or glossary.
It goes on to say that vocabulary is also all the words recognized and understood by a particular person although not necessarily used by him, these may be an interrelated group of nonverbal symbols, signs, gestures, etc. used for communication or expression.

Now let’s do some math to see how long it will take us to learn 4000 words or what some have called the minimum amount of vocabulary one must have to be considered fluent.

7 days a week
52 weeks per annum
4 weeks per month
12 months per annum

How long will it take to obtain a 4000 word vocabulary?

Well if we learned 4000 words in one day it would only take us one day, but is it reasonable to assume that we will retain those words? Unless you have a photographic memory we should consider something else. How about 4000 words in 1 month? Is that a reasonable goal? I don’t think either of those goals are within a typical realizable amount attainable possible. We need a reasonable goal that is attainable that leaves us some breathing room to assimilate the vocabulary into our own speech system. I feel 6-8 words a day might be stretching us thin a little bit but it is the one I will recommend. Actually, the way I did it was to learn 15 words every two days but for sake of clarity lets stick with words/day.
We don’t want to memorize to many words because we will end up worse than learning only 1 word a week. At one word a week it would take us 4000 days, or almost 11 years to have such a vocabulary. That’s too long if you figure that for an accelerated college degree program you will be spending 4-6 years to obtain your B.A. and still wouldn’t be fluent either way, 11 years is too long. These goals will be set for you to learn 4000 vocabulary terms in 1 year and 1 month from your starting date. This is still a very lofty goal. In order to learn 4000 vocabulary in 1 year and 1 month you will need to learn 10-11 words / day
That is the goal 10-11 words / day, that is everyday with no rest.

Day 1 goal – memorize 10 words today, tomorrow and 10 new words everyday for the next 9 months. Don’t get discouraged after 9 months if you stick with your goals you won’t be pera pera (fluent), but you will be enabled to handle almost any conversation that comes your way.


Day 2 goal -


Day 3 goal –

Weekly goal

Monthly goal

3 month goal

6 month goal

Beginning

So what exactly is fluency?

How do we measure fluency? There are rest assured quite a few ways to perhaps measure fluency. I am not aware of any fluency machine that can instantly measure your fluency like we can take your temperature. I have heard it said at least once that fluency is dependant upon total vocabulary memorized. And they put a number on it of 4000 different words. I cannot say I totally agree with that statement. No doubt, other requirements for being fluent in a language exist other than just knowledge of vocabulary. Although many other complex processes are involved in fluency we will start with how to set goals in memorizing words to increase our vocabulary power. Setting goals to memorizing vocabulary is a good place to start. So how much vocabulary power do you have under your belt?
The amount of words that you know and are able to translate those words into and out of your native tongue and into and out of your target language. Know the meaning of words so thoroughly that you can interchange them instantly. Also the use of mneumonics I suggest as helpful ways to memorize words, especially in Japanese. Those two techniques are all to be had in my other two lessons Mneumonics and Circumlocution, how to use and apply them in both directions this is taking for granted and assuming that at least one language is known. Unilateral understanding. Fluency can be measured in terms of how many words one knows and that is what section 1 was all about (if you missed it check it here http://

Just as one can word or phrase or apply any manipulation to the language so that its suits our purpose and the main purpose and reason is to get our meaning across. Sharing a As long as the method we use suffices to get our message across it doesn’t even matter if we can speak Japanese or not. In any language, if you look like you gotta go ‘pee’ you don’t have to say a word people will understand you. If you look tired or motion your hands as if you are sleeping, our knowledge of Nihongo lets body language assume the role.
What is the shortest distance between you and getting what you want. You are allowed to use any and all means necessary to get your meaning across. Please see my article on circumlocution for sure fire ways to get your meaning across even if you don’t know the Japanese words for it. http://jappermon.com
Ones’s own Native tongue,
Just in mannerisms and the exact vocabulary and grammatical structure employed by the speaker can there be vast amounts of missed meanings to occur.
Japanese could be spoken in any number of differing ways;
intelligently, suave, brave, naive, sophisticated, charming, honorifically, stately, manly cunning, feminine, drunk, legendary all sorts of ways to speak like and just as we have the ish to make something in nihongo the word becomes ppoi.
Noun+ ppoi = noun ‘ish’
beautifully, wonderfully or bold or any other way you can think of
The levels keigo kokugou must know how to
manipulate verbs, while memorizing and strengthening your store of Japanese words to put into your goal oriented language arsenal. With that arsenal and using all of your faculties to summon together the ability to speak inside of another tongue, and also to be able to open your ears to such an extent that they become even more sensitive to different words, consonants, vowels phonemes.
Along with your noun memorization oath.( see appendix )noun (don't take for granted any place names that are presented to you on your quest for complete Japanese mastery. You have to commit yourself to a reasonable yet challenging goal.
Througout these mini- japanese language tutoring lessons

After you verb in Japanese

Japanese Plug and Play Ghetto Grammar JPPGG #109
Verb (Base TE) + KARA – after verb’ing
After, After, and After - 3 ways to say, “after verb’ing” in Japanese

To say that you will do something after doing something else in Japanese, use the following grammar construction:

Take verbs and put them into base TE.

Verbs ending in su becomes shi-te  shite
Verbs ending in ku becomes ku-ite 
Verbs ending in gu becomes ide 

HANASU (v. to speak) – HANASHITE

HON O YONDE KARA NERU TO OMOIMASU. I think I’ll sleep after reading a book.

TABETE KARA SHUKUDAI O SURU. – after I eat I’m going to do homework.

UNDO WO SHITE KARA SHAWA O SURU KOTO GA SUKI DESU. –
I like to take a shower after I exercise.

After verb – verb (base TA) + ATO DE –

SAKE O NONDA ATO DE NEMUKUNATTA –
I got sleepy after drinking some* sake.

After verb – verb ( base TA) + NOCHI NI

Nomu - (v. To drink) –
Nomu (base ta)
Bu, mu or nu
ta  nda
Nomu in base ta is NONDA

SAKE O NONDA NOCHI NI INU O SAMPO SHI NI ITTA –
(After I drank some sake I took the dog for a walk.)

Japanese Plug and Play Ghetto Grammar JPPGG #109
Verb (Base TE) + KARA – after verb’ing
After, After, and After - 3 ways to say, “after verb’ing” in Japanese

To say that you will do something after doing something else in Japanese, use the following grammar construction:

Take verbs and put them into base TE.

Verbs ending in su becomes shi-te à shite
Verbs ending in ku becomes ku-ite à
Verbs ending in gu becomes ide à

HANASU (v. to speak) – HANASHITE

HON O YONDE KARA NERU TO OMOIMASU. I think I’ll sleep after reading a book.

TABETE KARA SHUKUDAI O SURU. – after I eat I’m going to do homework.

UNDO WO SHITE KARA SHAWA O SURU KOTO GA SUKI DESU. –
I like to take a shower after I exercise.

After verb – verb (base TA) + ATO DE –

SAKE O NONDA ATO DE NEMUKUNATTA –
I got sleepy after drinking some* sake.

After verb – verb ( base TA) + NOCHI NI

Nomu - (v. To drink) –
Nomu (base ta)
Bu, mu or nu
ta à nda
Nomu in base ta is NONDA

SAKE O NONDA NOCHI NI INU O SAMPO SHI NI ITTA –
(After I drank some sake I took the dog for a walk.)

Japanese Days

Take for example the days of the week. First off in almost every single language in the world there is a day denoted as the Sun’s day or the day of the Sun, and a moon day, or day of the moon. Now when we take a closer look at what the words for the days of the week in Japanese, we are liable to pass it off as mere coincidence, the similarities are striking. The following table shows the words for days of the week in Japanese and in English.
Kasei has as its base fire, which would be translated fire day. In English our equivalent of fire’s day is Tuesday, named after the Tiu the god of war and the sky. But before the Germanic peoples renamed the second day of the week Tuesday, the Romans had a system of naming the days of the week after their god and had called it dies martis ‘day of mars’, after the war god (source of French Mardi ‘Tuesday’). (Ayto, 544)
The kanji for Saturday being read do or basically the term for dirt or dirt’s day but is also the root of the Japanese word for Saturn, which is Dosei.
As for the third day of the week, some languages call it the 3rd day or day 3(Vietnamese) In Japanese this day is denoted as Suiyobi or day of the water, water’s day. The Germanic peoples called this day woden’s day or day of Odin after one of their mightiest gods. It seems that Wednesday got all screwed up being filtrated through the evolution of languages. It makes sense because Wednesday is in the middle of the week and if there are going to be corruptions from the pure form from whence the original words came from then the word for the middle of the week makes sense. In Japanese the word for mercury is kasei which would find its relations to our Tuesday. The Japanese Suisei is the planet
Now Thursday was named after the god Thor (where our English thunder comes from) but in the Roman system of naming the days of the week the fourth day was names dies jovis or day of Jupiter. In Japanese the fourth day is denoted Moku sei or day of the tree which is from the same root as that for their word for Jupiter, and that word being Mokusei.
Now Friday is denoted as Kinsei or day of gold in Japanese which is the same root for the word for planet kinsei which is Venus. The Germanic peoples called it after Odin’s wife Frigg (Ayto, 241) ‘Frigg’s day’ was a direct adaptation of Latin Veneris dies “Venus’s day’ (whence French vendredi ‘Friday’)

Oh yeah On Japanese Baby

There is spoken language and the written language. Kanji has deep meanings contained within each character which represents meaning like words. Much different than what we, who are stifled by the alphabet, are use to. We can see the meaning of things inside the kanji also. Therefore from the get go, we should try to wean ourselves from the temptation to look up words in a romaji dictionary because it makes it harder later or at least less easier to learn Japanese in depth if you cannot read the language. At the beginning there is no choice other than to study and memorize words that to decipher meaning. We should use a dictionary like sanseido’s daily concise wa-ei jiten.
Week 1 verbs - Drink, Sleep, Eat, go hataraku. Put verbs in all bases. Nouns: coffee, tea , milk, water, coca cola , sake , aquarius, beer, juice.

Adjectives - oishii, suteki na, benri na, okii, nagaim samui, atsui, chisai, mijikai.

Grammer masu, masen, mashita, masen deshita etc,
BII +tai desu = I want to. polite form. Without the desu its plain form.
Shall we +verb or let’s +verb = BII + masho (long oh vowel sound)

Be careful when studying Japanese for the first couple of times to make sure and pay attention to some awkward details that might throw your study off. The various types of Romanization techniques used to display the Japanese syllables to westerners varies greatly and should be duly noted. For example putting two a’s together doesn’t equal just one sound it will actually be a then a repeated after it as in okaasan or mother. in Japanese vowels can extend themselves into their double impressions where two vowels are connected into one yet the true pronunciation will be elongated double vowel sound.
Adjectives- are fun to play with Practice putting the adjectives in front of a noun etc
ex.
New car – atarashii kuruma,
Old house – furui ie
Big mouth – okii kuchi
Small flower – chisai hana

Remember that nouns have no plural as such as we do in our western tongue so new cars would still be atarashii kuruma, or big mouths would still be okii kuchi