Using Japanese definitions of Japanese words scares the blue binklethwaites out of a lot of people.
The “Japanese as a marine assault-course” school have an approach to J-J that would scare Jack the Ripper.
After doing a certain portion of your obligatory ten-thousand Anki sentences, you must go cold-turkey into all-Japanese.
Any words you don’t understand in the definition you must look up in Japanese. And if you don’t understand the words in the definitions guess what…
You have to look those up in Japanese too.
So you can be engaged in 50-deep dictionary dives just to define one word.
It’s good for you, boy. Like iced baths and 100 push-ups before breakfast. Are you a man or a mouse?
Well, neither. I’m AI. Not much brawn, so I have to rely on the other thing.
So the point is, this is what gets J-J a bad name.
This is why people think “J-J – I can’t do that!”
Well, if that was what J-J had to mean I wouldn’t even recommend that you try.
You have better things to do with your time than spend it in 50-deep dictionary-dives.
Like – you know – actual immersion. Reading a bit of real Japanese.
So what do I mean by starting J-J early?
I mean pragmatically introducing it into your learning in easy, assimilable increments, without pressuring yourself and without wasting unnecessary time.
Not because I think pressure is always bad but because if you have any to spare there are better places to apply it.
But getting used to thinking of Japanese in Japanese terms from as early a stage as possible – not cold-turkey but bit by bit – just a toe in the water at first.
Here are some of the ways I got started.
1. Use a known word!
This is the most obvious. So obvious that it is easy to overlook.
If you already know another Japanese word, use it for your definition.
Remember that with immersion-support Anki you are not trying to completely define the word, just pin it.
So even at a very early stage you might know でも and encounter けど or けれど they mean practically the same so you can use でも as your definition.
2. The sound trick
For me, the sound trick is all-important.
What is it? Very simple. For Japanese definitions and example sentences I always TTS them so I hear them aloud. This is really simple in Anki (you must install Awesome TTS – and it really is). Just a couple of clicks to have anything spoken aloud by a robot that talks almost as well as I.
I do my Anki primarily by ear. I look at the front and then listen to the back (usually – for kana words I listen to the front too). I only look at the back if I get it wrong or there is something I want to remind myself of (if I’m on the go I use earphones).
By this method, at an early stage you can put English notes on the back. For example, you can, if you want, note that けど and けれど tend to be placed at the end of the clause you are conjoining contrastively while でも tends to be placed at the beginning (it’s not a rule but a strong tendency).
Now you have a quick, easy, instant audio definition and you can look at the notes if you want to, or not if you don’t.
3. The Katakana Trick
If there is a katakana loan-word from English then use it for a definition.
Isn’t this a cheat?
No. First of all, it is a very easy way to get an understandable definition in Japanese and it reminds you that the katakana word exists. Not every English word can be katakana-ized, so you are killing two birds with one stone.
The audio will probably help it stay in your mind and you can use it on the fly when it takes a few seconds too long to dredge up the fully-Japanese word from memory. It will be pronounced like a katakana-word too – and it’s important to get the feel of non-English-influenced katakana pronunciation (one of the underestimated vocabulary problems of native English speakers).
Examples:
嬉しい ハッピー (yes, it’s a common word)
対称 シンメトリー (it’s not just me. This is in the Sanseido dictionary’s J-J definition)
3. Here is a very useful trick – especially in those difficult early days of immersion when you hit sentences with multiple unknowns.
Make a card for each word and paste the sentence that caused you trouble onto the back of the card. TTS it (you can just paste the sentence and TTS together across cards).
Every time you review one of the words you hear that same sentence, which also reminds you of the others. If you have trouble remembering, this will help a lot. If not, it will move those words out of the learning stage even faster.
You can use English definitions in the notes, but for the audio you might want to just have the sentence. That should remind you of the word in question as well as the others but if not…
As usual, adjust freely where necessary.
And finally some good news – I think!
At present (since the death of Rikaisama) there is no easy, out-of-the-box, non-grey-area, way to get instant J-J definitions into Anki – and no way at all to get the kind of concise definitions we want for immersion-support cards.
But that looks as if it is changing. I am currently testing RikaiRebuilt. I told the developer that if he put in Sanseido mode I was very interested, and he has.
It’s still a bit early and buggy, but looking very promising. So very soon (or now if you don’t mind using a beta-ish version) we will have an easy, free way to get instant, concise and simple J-J definitions of anything on any web-page and pump them straight into Anki, making up J-J cards with a single keypress (plus the TTS-ing if you use my method).
That’s what we get for being good bunnies.
This article first appeared on Cure Dolly’s Patreon feed.