Before coming to Taiwan, I probably spent close to six hours compiling and preparing “Koichi’s Amazing and Unbelievably Sexy Mandarin Learning Method” but then spent only two or so hours actually studying with it. Oops. To say the least, it wasn’t enough prep time, but I wasn’t terribly worried. These strategies focused on efficiency and getting the most bang for my buck. If anything it would help to focus me even more. I’d say that over these three weeks I didn’t become good at Mandarin by any means, but I do have a basic understanding of how most things work and also know how to build upon what I’ve learned. I’m at the point where learning comes quickly and I can understand why something works the way it does, and probably my biggest weakness is vocabulary.

But, my actual Mandarin level isn’t what really matters here. What does matter is what I learned about learning a new language. It’s been a while, and it was a good experience since it’s sometimes difficult to imagine what it’s like to start learning Japanese (which is a terrible thing for teaching). So, let’s get started. Here’s the stuff I learned about Mandarin that is relevant to starting to learn Japanese as well. I hope it helps you to learn any new language just a little bit better.

The Magic 12 Sentences

The biggest and most overarching idea that I tried on this trip was the concept of the “12 sentences.” These twelve sentences are sentences that focus on grammar and when learned they teach you pretty much all of the basic grammar that you need to know. Once you know them all, you can mix and match ideas from each to create your own even more complicated sentences. You can spend two or three hours going through these sentences, breaking them down, understanding how they work (very important step), and then memorizing the patterns.

Of course, by learning these sentences you can grammatically express just most things. In fact, I bet you that 80% or more of the grammar used on a daily basis comes from these twelve sentences. Not too bad for a few hours of study. That being said, the vocabulary in these sentences is repetitive by design (so you can focus on grammar) which means you can pretty much only talk about John’s apples and what you want to do with them. More on that in a minute. Using this method, vocabulary does have to be learned separately, but since that’s such an important topic it will get its own section(s) later in this article.

In case you’re interested, here are the sentences I used:

The apple is red
這個蘋果是紅色的
Zhège píngguǒ shi hóngsè de

This is John’s apple
這是約翰的蘋果
Zhè shì yuēhàn de píngguǒ

I give John the apple
我給約翰這個蘋果
Wǒ gěi yuēhàn zhège píngguǒ

We give him the apple
我們給他這個蘋果
Wǒmen gěi tā zhège píngguǒ

He gives it to John
他把它給約翰
Tā bǎ tā gěi yuēhàn

She gives it to him
她把它給他
Tā bǎ tā gěi tā

She gives it to him
她把它給他
Tā bǎ tā gěi tā

Is the apple red?
這個蘋果是紅色的嗎？
Zhège píngguǒ shì hóngsè de ma?

The apples are red.
這些蘋果是紅色的。
Zhèxiē píngguǒ shì hóngsè de.

I must give it to him.
我必須把它給他。
Wǒ bìxū bǎ tā gěi tā.

I want to give it to her.
我想把它給她。
Wǒ xiǎng bǎ tā gěi tā.

I’m going to know tomorrow.
明天我會知道的。
Míngtiān wǒ huì zhīdào de.

I can’t eat the apple.
我不能吃這個蘋果。
Wǒ bùnéng chī zhège píngguǒ

*You’ll notice that I made the mistake of using simplified Mandarin, which isn’t used in Taiwan (whoops). You’ll have to ignore that for me, if you don’t mind. Traditional is actually much easier for me anyways because it’s what gets used in Japanese.

In order to get these sentences translated, I used Gengo to get a translation, then VoiceBunny to get a recording. Alternatively, I’m sure people on Lang-8, Reddit (find an appropriate subreddit), and Rhinospike would be happy to help, though I needed to make sure the quality was there (and I needed them fast) so I paid for the two services at the top of this paragraph.

If you look at these twelve sentences, you’ll begin to notice how they build upon each other. The first sentence “The apple is red” gives you the grammar pattern “The [noun] is [adjective].” Personally, I’d have simplified this down further and built up to the first sentence, but we’re on an express train here and there’s no time for local stations. In the second sentence, “This is John’s Apple,” you learn the pattern “This is [noun]‘s [noun].” Just with these two sentences, you can also make other sentences as well. Ones you’ve never learned before! You could figure out how to say “John’s apple is red,” for example, just by combining what you learned. As each sentence comes up, it teaches you a new bit of grammar that you can also apply to the previous sentences. You’re really learning a lot more than meets the eye. Of course, if you learn only these twelve sentences and never mix and match you’d still know a lot too, but I think the potential for greatness comes with the combinations as you build up. As I think you can see, there is a huge amount you can learn just from a few hours of study. Even if you took a long time with these (say a week) you’re still learning an immense amount in a very short timespan. I’m pretty sure most Mandarin classes would take three to six months to teach what you could learn in the time it takes to watch a baseball game.

This is easily applicable to Japanese as well. Going through these sentences in Mandarin made me find the parts that were a little more difficult to understand. I can see where these sentences need to be broken down further, and where I need to build up the explanations and lessons to get people to learn and understand how these sentences work. You will definitely see a modified version of this method in TextFugu in the future as I (correctly) thought it would be very effective for new learners. This trip only solidified my belief that these sentences truly are a kind of magic trick… It’s not a trick, Michael, it’s an illlusssion.

Common Vocabulary

Vocabulary is the bread and butter of language learning. Even if you don’t know a lick of grammar, you can get by with words and body motions. “Food. Hungry. Eat. Good.” You get the idea.

Since I failed to prepare and was learning Mandarin on the fly, I tried to make things as efficient as possible. I found and compiled various sources listing out the “most frequently used Mandarin words.” I then went through that list and categorized things by type (noun, verb, adjective, adverb, particle, etc). I found that these lists really lacked nouns, and the more I thought about it the more it made sense. There are so many nouns out there. So, of course they get spread out on the frequency charts. You can “to eat” a lot of things, but there’s only one time you use “tomato” and that’s when you’re talking about a tomato. At first I was a little worried about this, but then I had another epiphany. Every single noun can be replaced with the word “this” or “that.” In the long term nouns are important… but when it comes to learning a language and being able to communicate right away, it’s the adjectives and verbs that really say the things you want to say. I then cut my list down to focus on verbs and adjectives making my study even more efficient.

Cutting down what I had to learn and also learning words in order of frequency helped a lot. I was able to say and understand a lot more (thank you “context”) and I found that the nouns I did need to learn just sort of learned themselves. If I needed to talk about a tomato I just looked up how to say tomato. After using it a few times I new it and could use it in the future. Naturally, the more common (or more useful in the situation) nouns came up more often, which means I was learning the nouns via a natural IRL frequency chart / SRS, but more on that later.

In terms of what I learned from this experience, I think it’s a multi-parter. First, vocabulary is super important. Second, verbs and adjectives are the most important vocabulary to know if you want to communicate with as few words as possible. Third, nouns will come naturally. Of course, with a textbook or something like that, the nouns have to be injected in a way that makes them appear in a “natural” order, but that’s good for me to think about as well. In terms of your own Japanese learning, just be sure to focus on verbs and adjectives and really solidify your knowledge with those and build from there. It will help you to learn your grammar and nouns more quickly and effectively over the long term.

Natural SRS Of Immersion

Photo by Emily

Speaking of learning vocabulary, I found myself thinking more and more about SRS, though not so much the kind that’s found in resources like Anki (mechanical, scheduled, etc). Instead, I was thinking about “natural SRS,” which relates to how you learn a new language when you’re in an immersed environment. It’s not as scientific and probably not as efficient, though it is still very effective. Sometimes the timings will be good, sometimes they’ll be off, but the most common words will make their way into your long term memory over multiple repetitions and over a long period of time until it gets into your long term memory. It doesn’t involve flashcards but it does really work. This is why immersion is the greatest way to learn a language.

So, as I thought about this I thought about how this idea could be applied to learning resources. Of course, we have an SRS in WaniKani, though that’s not quite the same since it’s man made. In TextFugu, for example, I could introduce and then reintroduce vocabulary at set intervals throughout the text, effectively putting an SRS into the content and material without you even noticing it was an SRS. It would be a lot more natural this way and you’d find yourself learning without having to try nearly as much. Gone would be the time spent looking through flashcards because you’d be getting your repetitions in without knowing it. It would be a much more efficient way to put something in your head, compared to just saying “hey, learn this, ok, moving on.” This is definitely something you’ll be seeing in some of our future stuff.

Kanji Is Boss

Photo by Travis Juntara

This one I did know. Kanji is amazing. Everyone should learn kanji if they’re going to be learning Japanese, hands down, right from the start. Not learning kanji is why people take so long to learn the Japanese language. It’s like trying to learn English without learning the alphabet. Why should you learn kanji? Let me list the reasons:

1. Kanji meanings will help you to understand the meanings of words you don’t know. It also means you can associate new words to something (kanji) already in your head which is way better for memory. Associations are the grease that keep the wheels turning.
2. By learning the kanji readings, you’ll be able to read most words even if you don’t know the word. This makes it way easier to learn a word, since the sounds aren’t just random sounds, they’re sounds you’ve associated to kanji and already know. You start off knowing things you don’t know, if that makes sense. It would be like if you knew the words “account” and “ability” already, then learned the word “accountability.” You’re putting together only two things instead of fifteen things (the number of letters in the word “accountability”).
3. With kanji knowledge you can read more, which means the things you can use to study and get better at Japanese really expand, which means you have many more avenues to learn with. It just gives you options. Not knowing kanji gives you very few options.

With Mandarin it’s the same thing, though I found that Japanese kanji is a lot more broken and confusing. Even for things I couldn’t read out loud in Mandarin (because the readings are different most of the time… not to mention tones!) I could still understand the meanings. Watching the news, I knew that fruit prices were going up due to too much rain fall in Taiwan (random!). I could also figure out that a food place we stopped at required you to bus your own table. The list goes on and on. Things that I have no right understanding were understandable, all thanks to knowing kanji meanings. I knew things I didn’t know, which is a pretty amazing feeling. Kanji can give you that feeling in Japanese too. And, should you be interested in learning Mandarin in the future, it will help with that as well. It also will help you to envision new words and grammar in your head. Learning becomes easier. It’s just that simple. Put in the time, your future self won’t regret it.

You Learn A Lot More Being There

You probably already knew this, but being in a country that speaks the language you’re learning helps a ton. Immersion is good. That’s an obvious statement.

But, I started to think about what part of it was good. While watching a lot of television and listening to people speak is nice in huge quantities, the real learning and memorization didn’t come from this… it came from forcing myself to recall information I had learned. I’ve touched on in the past how recalling information (not stuffing it into your brain) is how memories are formed. That’s the reason why a lot of people feel like they know the content of an exam better after the test rather than before it. You’re forced to recall information during the test for the first time ever (what bad study habits you have!). In immersion situations, if you want to communicate you have to recall and pull out vocabulary and grammar from your brain and you have to do it a lot. Even though recalling shaky information is naturally an uncomfortable thing, the necessity of recall in a foreign place makes you do it more than you would if you were just sitting around in your home country watching television all day long.

In fact, that brings up another point: the necessity. Necessity is a huge motivator. In fact, it’s not too different from procrastinating on a big school essay. For the first seven days, you don’t work on your paper. Then, for the last twelve hours you go gangbusters and finish it all up at the last minute. Being at home in your home country is like those first seven days. Being in another country that speaks the language that you’re learning is like the final twelve hours before the essay is due. Except instead of being just twelve hours it’s all the time. You will learn a lot this way.

This is why I’ve said in the past that flying to a country for two weeks instead of joining and paying for a six month language class can often be more effective. It’s also sometimes less expensive, depending on which language class you’re looking at, and you’ll surely have a lot of fun. There’s something to say about the power of necessity when paired with recall. The intensity is just so hard to replicate.

Lastly, I want to point out that immersion is great for all these reasons, but it only gets better with study. It’s not like you can be using the language you’re learning all the time, even if you’re in Taiwan or Japan or wherever. Use your off time to do some actual study. In high school in Japan they made me do Kumon. And while I hated it, I learned a lot more because of it. Things you study while you’re in an immersive language environment seem to magically pop up. You notice them, and then you recall what you studied, and then you use it. Things that would normally go over your head suddenly become familiar, and by pairing regular study with this you’ll learn much, much faster. In fact, I’d say it’s a necessity to do regular study while being immersed. A lot of people will rely solely on immersion. You can look back on these people as you leave them in your dust. Studying just puts more things into your natural SRS queue.

I’m glad I was reminded about all this because it’s going to make me think a lot more about these ideas for TextFugu. I’ve already focused on straight-up motivation over there, but attempting to replicate the feeling of “necessity to learn” and focusing on forcing recall within that necessity is going to be a big goal of mine. I don’t know if I’ve figured out the best way to do it just yet, but it’s something I’m thinking about a lot right now.

New Languages = Intelligence

Photo by mxmstryo

Whatever happens, learning a new language means a lot of other non-language learning as well. They say that the more languages kids know the more intelligent they become. I want to believe that this is because you have to learn new concepts that are unlearnable in certain languages, meaning you expand your mind to concepts that the people around you just can’t comprehend, making you a more “complete” person. I also feel like more things in your brain just gives your brain a lot more items you can associate new things with. The more that’s recallable in your brain the easier it will become to add even more into it.

Whether it’s Japanese or another language, I hope you think about language learning. It’s one of the most rewarding things you can do. You get smarter, you can travel to new places, you can meet new people, and you just become a better person overall. Hopefully the things I learned these three weeks and shared just now will allow me to help you to achieve your goals with learning Japanese more in the future. Or, perhaps they will help you to learn Spanish, Mandarin, or even Gaelic. I look forward to applying this new knowledge soon on my end, but feel free to get started yourself right now!

I think that I might make mistakes more than most people, but I bet that anyone who is learning a new language will make a lot of mistakes too. Yet, we can always learn from our mistakes, and once we make one, we will try not to make the same mistake twice. That being said, some mistakes are too much fun to make only once.

Japanese People and English

Although many older Japanese people have never had training in English, most of the younger generations have studied English for three years in junior high school and another three years in high school. In most Japanese universities, English is an obligatory subject as well, so many of the university graduates have studied English for a total of ten years or more.

However, Japanese teachers mainly focus on English grammar and reading, so they do not teach listening, speaking and pronunciation as effectively as they should. This is true and has been used as an excuse to explain Japanese people’s poor English ability in listening, speaking and pronunciation. But if you have ever seen funny Japanese peoples’ EngRish, you know that we aren’t necessarily excellent in grammar and reading either. For myself, I used to say ‘a sox’ and ‘soxes’ instead of a sock and socks. I finally realized that it was wrong two years graduating from university. Last night I learned that I was saying ‘teethbrush’ instead of ‘toothbrush’, too, so I guess it never stops.

Mixing up English words.

One particular time that I mixed up some English words was particularly funny / embarrassing. One summer day, while studying English in Canada on my working holiday program, I was planning to go to a farewell party for my Russian classmate. After ESL school that day, I went back home to drop off my textbooks. I walked through the back door and my homestay dad asked, “Do you wanna have a beer with us?” Usually, I’d immediately burst out with a “Yeeesss!”, but I had the farewell party to go to that day, so I ‘mournfully’ said, “Sorry, I have to go to a funeral party for my Russian friend today”. Yep, I mixed up the word ‘funeral’ and ‘farewell’.

I saw my homestay dad’s face turn really sad and kind of surprised. I didn’t understand why he looked so upset at the time and just thought he really wanted me to drink beer with him. When I went to the party, I heard my friends say ‘farewell’ party and at that moment I remembered what the word I used with my homestay dad actually meant. “Oh, no”. I thought. I was so embarrassed.

My “Embarassed” face

I think that mixing up words while speaking is a problem that many other people encounter, too. One of my friends was invited to a party at a restaurant. She got a seafood dish, but her shellfish hadn’t been cooked enough. When a waitress came over and asked them how everything was, she intended to say, “I don’t like your shellfish at all”, however, she told the waitress, “I don’t like your selfish at all.” The waitress was shocked for a moment and just said sorry to her and left. Not surprisingly, she got upset because it seemed as if the waitress didn’t care that her food wasn’t good and did not replace her dish for her. Her friends finally pointed out that she had said ‘selfish’ instead of ‘shellfish’.

Another friend of mine was talking about his niece and nephew and how they are so cute and how he lives for them and tries to spoil them whenever he gets the chance because he was never spoiled when he was a child. While telling us this, he surprised us by saying, “I try to live ‘bi-curiously’ through them.” As you probably have already guessed by now, what he meant to say was, “I try to live vicariously through them”. Although he is a slightly perverse person, ‘bi-curious-ly’ did not quite fit, even for him. Everyone made fun of him for a long time after that mistake – It’s been going on for three years now.

Mixing up Japanese words.

Photo by yoppy

As you probably already know, a typical Japanese sentence is formed by using 3 sets of characters: hiragana, katakana and kanji. Although hiragana is normally used for the grammar, the connection between words, the particles, etc, beginners probably write the whole sentence in hiragana or prefer a sentence written in hiragana. However, it will become lengthy and actually more difficult to comprehend than a sentence that also includes katakana and/or kanji.

Although it’s still possible to understand the sentence after reading it or its context carefully, you will find it difficult to figure out which of the hiragana formed a word without reading a few times. Moreover, you may mix up particles and other Japanese words and it could turn into a really silly sentence.

For example, the following sentences are written totally in hiragana, but could mean two or more things depending on the katakana and/or kanji.

ぱんつくったことある。(pantsukuttakotoaru)
パン作ったことある？(Have you ever made bread?)
パンツ食ったことある？(Have you ever eaten underwear?)

にくかった。(nikukatta)
肉買った。(I bought some meat.)
憎かった。(I hated him/her/it.)

きのうえきにいった。(kinouekiniitta)
昨日駅に行った。(Yesterday, I went to the station.)
木の上気に入った。(I like the place on the tree.)

きょうとしよりきたよ。(kyoutoshiyorikitayo)
今日年寄り来たよ。(Today elderly people came over.)
京都市より北よ。(It’s North out of Kyoto city.)

ねえちゃんとふろはいった？（neechantohurohaitta?)
ねえ、ちゃんと風呂入った？(Hey, have you taken a bath properly?)
姉ちゃんと風呂入った？ (Did you take a bath with your sister?)

はしのはしをみてください。(hashinohashiomitekudasai)
橋の端を見てください。(Look at the edge of the bridge.)
箸の端を見てください。(Look at the edge of the chopsticks.)
端の端を見てください。(Look at the very edge.)
ハシの箸を見てください。(Look at Hashi’s chopsticks.)

If you make use of katakana and kanji, the whole sentence become shorter and easier for you to understand. However, during a conversation, you can’t read the katakana or kanji. Therefore, I believe that many people who study Japanese mix up Japanese words too.

I’m going to introduce some examples out of the ‘Gaijin Pot forums.’

I would sometimes go into KFC and order a Chicken Burger, however, I was pronouncing it wrongly, “Chikanbaagaa” until one day I actually pronounced it correctly, “Chikin baagaa”. However, the arubaito guy who had served me a few times before said “Chikin baagaa desu ne? Chikan baagaa ja nai desu yo ne?”, which made another arubaito girl standing near by burst out in laughter. -Since1990

Chikin: chicken
Chikan: a molester

I got the words 人参 (にんじん) and 妊娠 (にんしん) mixed up one day. The woman became a carrot rather than pregnant! -Scrum Doctor

Ninjin: carrots
Ninshin: pregnant

I once heard of someone getting angry at people on the train when he realized that they were staring at him. Apparently he meant to say, “I’m not an animal, I’m a human being!” (私は動物じゃない、人間(にんげん)です！), but it came out as, “I’m not an animal, I’m a carrot!” (私は動物じゃない、ニンジンです！). -Since1990

Ninjin: carrots
Ningen: person, human

The two words I confuse the most though are vacuum cleaner (sojiki) and funeral (soshiki), with often embarrassing results. -renkachan71

Sojiki: vacuum cleaner
Soshiki: Funeral

After being in Japan for just a few months, and having only mastered the really essential expressions, I went up to one of my older students at a bar to ask if she had had a lot to drink: “おっぱい飲む？” I asked. She retorted with one of the few other words I had picked up:バカ！-Dennis

ippai: a lot
oppai: boobs, breast milk

As you can see, other people make these mistakes too! If these people can make embarrassing mistakes like this and move on, you have nothing to worry about. A mistake is just a mistake, after all!

Failure Teaches Success

See? There are so many mistakes already. I’d like to say “失敗は成功のもと（しっぱいはせいこうのもと / shippai wa seikou no moto)” meaning “failure teaches success” to everyone learning Japanese here! Even Michael Jordan said, “I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life and that is why I succeed.” It’s not a 冗談 (“joudan” is pronounced the same like “Jordan” and means “a joke”). Sorry, that was a little bit of a 寒い (samui:lame) pun. Anyway, don’t hesitate to speak incorrect Japanese to get better at Japanese. It will only help you to get better!

But not to fear! I’ve returned today to shower you with gifts. Gifts of knowledge and prosperity. Your Japanese skills will soar and…ahh, what the heck. Let’s just get on with it. Here’s some words related to the Japanese summer with a few colourful anecdotes. Because, you know, language and culture are inseparable. Kinda like this twisted daikon above. Also a mini giveaway for you hungry learners at the end of this post!

夏バテ (natsubate) – Summer Lethargy

Here in Japan, summer comes in a self-contained bubble of humidity. For about 3-5 months of the year, temperatures soar and people drop like flies having had all the life force sucked out of them. You might imagine that everyone slips into a zombified state doing nothing but waving 扇子 (sensu – folding fans) or うちわ (uchiwa – paper fans) and you wouldn’t be far off. So yes, right now yours truly is attempting to fight off zombifiction from the suffering summer heat. That’s natsubate for you!

セミ (semi) – cicada (noisy insect!)

Ahh, the sound of summer. Do you have these little critters where you live? For me in the U.K, we always had a resident wood pigeon who would coo sweet pigeon melodies down our chimney pipe. Now when I leave the house it sounds like a battleground, littered with the corpses of these short-lived insects. Personally, my ears have always interpreted the noise as the sound of Spaniards. (No offence to our Spanish friends our there, or the Inquisition!) Si si si si si si si si si. Sisisisisisisisisssss…..

かき氷 (kakigoori) – Shaved Ice.

Or so the dictionary tells us. I prefer to think of them as mounds of delicious cool. Covered with your favourite flavoured syrup (awesome, two British spellings in a row, right there!), these heavenly creations can be the only thing keeping you alive through many hot days. Other summer necessities include ちゅうちゅう (chuu-chuu) – flavoured ice lollies – or ガリガリ君 (garigari-kun) – a particular brand of ice pole sporting a kid with big teeth!

線香花火 (senkou-hanabi) – Sparkler

A kind of Japanese sparkler. You get all the fizz and crackle of normal sparklers, but with a curious little ball of hot goo forming at the tip. The ball grows bigger and bigger as the firework continues, before dropping to the floor and dying. People compete to see whose ball will hang on the longest. Very poetic and a great metaphor for many things Japanese, I reckon – the fleeting beauty found in transient objects and all that. I’m curious though, do they have these fireworks in other countries? I’ve only seen them in Japan myself.

There you have it then. A few summery Japanese words. Little and often eh? That’s the best way to keep up your Japanese studies, young grasshoppers (or should I say cicadas? har har har).

Well, I know you guys can’t get enough of giveaways around here, so as I promised here’s another great chance to win cool stuff from Japan. I have not less than *12* sets of prizes to ship out, including:

Stuff for learning Japanese while lounging in the loo.

And items for poking people with.

How about a pointy Japanese phrasebook to help your language studies?

Or, since we all worship the Tofu-gu around here, some authentic tofu-flavoured paper! In actual tofu packaging!

Oh yes. These and a Schoolboy-coat-man signed postcard from Japan could be yours. All you have to do is tell me what your best advice is for learning a foreign language.

Check out the full post for detailed information (and an embarrassing video!) I’m also giving a little time extension because you all rock. You have until Wednesday 25th August 2010! Not long then! Go for it!

P.S. If you think summer is too warm, you should follow Gakuranman on Twitter.

P.P.S. If you thought that tofu flavored paper was a good idea, you should try to win something from his contest.

What Is Evernote?

First off, you should probably learn more about how Evernote works, on a whole, before I dive into how you can use it to study Japanese. Evernote is a tool that helps you capture and remember everything. Because it syncs with your phone, computer, and so on, no matter how or where you gather the information, it will appear on all of your devices. These can be things like grocery lists (I write down my grocery list in Evernote on my computer, and it syncs with my iPhone, which I use in the store), remembering your favorite vintage of wine (take a picture of the bottle in the restaurant), or even saving entire articles with the click of a button (if you have a plugin installed in your browser). Because the organization and search features (you can separate your notes into notebooks, and then further break them up with tags) it’s easy to find your notes later. I use Evernote to take pictures of books I want to buy, movies I want to watch, to copy and paste articles I’ll read on my phone later, backups of newsletters / important information, shortcut keys for different applications, instructions on pieces of paper I don’t want to physically keep, my license plate number (in case I need to remember it), and more. Really, it’s good for almost any type of information you could ever want to store and have easy access to later. It’s not the prettiest UI in the world, but it does its job really well (that job being storing information and allowing me to retrieve it easily later). Best part is that it’s free unless you want to upgrade to a bigger plan, which I may actually have to do pretty soon.

So how about using it to learn Japanese, or perhaps some other language? I haven’t started doing this yet personally (I told you, I just had my epiphany today!), but I’ve thought about it, and here are some great ways to use Evernote to practice your Japanese. After I’m done, I’d love to hear from Evernote users out there on how you would use it for Japanese practice as well. I feel like there’s a lot of untapped potential in this simple little app!

Copying Articles To Practice Later

A lot of times when I’m scrolling through Japanese content, I find something I want to read and use as study material, but don’t have the time to study it right then. There are a couple of problems with this. 1. A lot of newspaper sites pull their content after a little while, which means bookmarking it won’t work. 2. I’m not going to remember it if I just bookmark it anyways.

With Evernote, you can install their browser plugin, highlight the text you want, and then click the Evernote button. From there, a popup will appear allowing you to add it to a particular notebook (I’d create a “Japanese” notebook) and then add tags (highly recommend you tag everything! In this case, I might tag it as “asahi,” “readlater,” and “Japanese.”

By using Evernote, it’s easy to gather a lot of content (and only the content you want, i.e. the article) and store it away for later in a place that’s easily searchable. Other options besides newspapers are Japanese blogs, Japanese Tweets, and any other sites that have regularly updated Japanese content.

Studying Vocabulary

Vocabulary study on it’s own probably shouldn’t be done on Evernote (use Smart.fm or Anki if you want to do that). There is, however, a lot of potential for compiling sentences that use the vocabulary that you’re learning. There’s probably a couple of ways you could do it.

1. Create a new note for every vocabulary word that you’re studying. As you come across sentences (either through dictionary searches, or Smart.fm example sentences) that use the word you’re studying, add them to that vocab’s note. That way, whenever you search for that vocab word, you’ll be able to find sentences that go along with it, and you can use that to study.

2. Just create one big note that has all your practice sentences in it. Using the search feature, you can find sentences that use the word you’re looking for and just scroll through looking at those. Not quite as organized, but less time-intensive as well.

Another thing you could try is using the tag feature to tag notes with the vocab you are learning. This, I imagine, could get kind of overwhelming, though, so try it at your own risk.

Keeping Track Of Grammar

One really neat thing you could do with Evernote is use it to keep track of grammar you’ve learned. All you would need to do is create a “Grammar” notebook (or even a note) and put all the grammar you’ve learned in one place. This way, if you’re having trouble with a particular grammar point (or just learned something new about a grammar point), you can open up Evernote no matter where you are, get the information you need, and move on with your life. No more searching your textbook or searching the Internet. It’s all there at your fingertips and you can always add more info whenever you need to, and it’s written in your own style, which means you’ll understand it.

Personally, I think this would be a great way to study for the JLPT, since a lot of the learning is pretty grammar-centric. As you’re going through other study material, this could be a great reference and help you study faster and more effectively.

Keeping A Language Log

Keeping track of the things you’ve done, the things you had trouble with, and then everything in between is pretty important, I think. Normally, I’d recommend using a blog platform (like WordPress) to do this, since being “public” with your log should help motivate you more, but this article is about Evernote, so let’s stick to that. Keeping a log with Evernote is fairly easy, and it’s a good way to keep track of what you had trouble with and what you should study more of. Here is a list of things you could log in Evernote in regards to your Japanese learning:

• What you did today / What you studied today
• What was giving you trouble? Can you write more about it and figure out the root cause of the problem?
• Breakthroughs
• Vocabulary words you learned / studied / need to study more
• What you’ll be studying next (so you don’t forget the next day)
• Sentences, paragraphs, etc., that you wrote today
• Ideas for studying better based on what happened earlier
• etc.

There’s a lot to keep track of when you’re learning a new language, and Evernote is a great platform to help you do it. By keeping a language log, you’re deconstructing a lot of what you’re doing, which is actually really helpful and will assist you in understanding what you’ve done and what you need to do. I’d recommend trying it out for a week or two if you haven’t before. It does a lot more than you might think!

Collecting Inspiration

Staying inspired and motivated is one of the most difficult things when learning a new language (especially on your own). This is something that TextFugu does a pretty good job tackling and taking care of – but you can find and compile the things that inspire you personally, right in Evernote! By collecting articles, quotes, notes, etc., into an “inspiration” notebook or tag, anytime you’re feeling down, or feeling like you can’t do it anymore, you can go straight to that section of Evernote and get a boost of energy.

Although I haven’t done this with Evernote myself, I do have a stack of books with chapters marked off anytime I need an inspirational “you can do it” lift. If those books were in Evernote, it would be that much easier. You’d be surprised at how much of a pick-me-up something like this can do, especially with something that really does need a lot of motivation, like language learning (especially if you study on your own).

Taking Plain Ol’ Notes

I wish I had Evernote when I was in school. I would have used it to take notes in class (well, actually, I’d probably have used Google Wave, and just collaborated on notes with 3-4 other people). If you’re in a class, though, Evernote is a pretty sweet way to do it, especially since you can sync your notes between computers and study no matter where you are (of course, there are things like Google Docs, Dropbox, and others which can do this part pretty well too). Still, it’s a pretty good way to do things. At the end of class (or during class, if you sit in the front), you can even take a picture of the whiteboard and save it to your note (it will even make the words in the image searchable!), that way you have the teacher’s scrobbles, your own scrobbles, and all the scrobbles in between right in one place. It certainly beats pen and paper, at least in terms of searching for things later. If anything, the tagging system makes Evernote a really worthwhile option for taking notes in class.

Sharing And Collaborating

One cool little feature that Evernote has is the ability to share your notes with others. If you want to allow people to modify your notes, you do have to be a premium member (which may or may not be worth it to you). I could see this being useful for people who are studying Japanese with others and want to share notes and ideas. I can also see this being useful for those of you who are learning in a class and taking class notes (and want to share those as well). There are any number of ways to use the share / collaborate feature of Evernote to your advantage. Other alternatives which also let you collaborate include Google Docs and Google Wave, which I would probably recommend more for the collaboration angle of things.

What Are Your Ideas?

Contribute to the Evernote-Japanese-Studying Idea-Pool by commenting below. I’m curious how you use or would use Evernote to your advantage when it comes to language learning. Like I’ve said a couple times already, I think there’s a ton of untapped Japanese-studying potential hidden away in Evernote, and it’s only a matter of figuring out the different uses. So, how would you use the big green elephant? [Evernote]

P.S. If you like elephants, you should follow me on Twitter