Japanese Language

2:04 AM

lolz

u gotta test it out on some japanese people

but be warned, they are harsh critics of jokes

Oh I did

they called me おじちゃん

2:19 AM

But, to be honest, my sense of humor is sometimes...not everyone gets it

I'll give you an example, this is my favorite joke ever

Q: How is a grape like a squirrel?
A: They're both purple, except for the squirrel.

nice, i look nonsense jokes too

you've prolly heard of
Q: How do you catch a bunny?
A: Hide in the bushes and make carrot sounds

yeah dont tell these to esl students though lolz

HAHA

Ok, that's going in my repertoire

3:25 AM

\lim_{x\to 0}

?

i was wondering what sites on SE render tex markup

oh

$\lim_{x\to 0}$

Probably just the tex and math sites

3:58 AM

well, bedtime for me :) see you later zzzZZZzzzz ^.^

おやすみください

どうぞもうおやすみください。おやすみくださいな。やすらかにおやすみください。昼ってきます。

6:29 AM

What are the pros/cons of having a custom/non-default room name? ex. Travel.SE's chat room is named "You Are Here", ServerFault's is "The Comms Room".
(I'm just childishly うらやましい of those rooms. How about "The Hibachi" for ours? Too hot?)

^ hibachi

6:41 AM

whats hibachi

A traditional heating device which was quite common until a few decades ago. In wintertime, people will huddle around it and make smalltalk. It's the white largish bowl in the pic.

yeah thats a good name

isnt there a more modern thing

forget what its called

おたつ

こたつ

こたつもいいね

11:23 AM

hey guys, I made this kana learning web app ( http://zanzou.cmikavac.net/ ) for beginners in kana as my CS degree thesis and I'm looking for some people that could help me a bit by practising kana on the website (I need to gather up some success rate statistics that are recorded when the app is used).

for people that already know kana even if you woke them up in the middle of the night - please try not to bump up the global scores too much because I need some representative information gathered from people that are beginners, not kana experts. :) also, if you know any kana beginners, feel …

oh and yes - the important part for my study is hiragana and katakana monographs statistics (using different difficulties and different flashcard types). digraphs and symbols with diacritics statistics are not that important to me at the moment.

what do the success rates refer to?

Just from a few seconds of trying, you may want to avoid showing the same kana twice.

taylor - the bottom success rate represents your total success rate (based on on symbols you tried so far). rates on the right side represent success rate for the current symbol.

gibbon - yes, I will do that. something like at least 4-5 different symbols before the current one can appear again. thanks!

11:39 AM

no i mean the "global statistics"

Why do you need this type of statistics anyhow, if I may ask?

taylor - aah, ok. it shows statistics of all the people that practised kana on the website so far (combined results). anonymous of course.

gibbon - we wanted to know which approach (kana to roumaji, roumaji to kana.. different difficulty) would be more successful. and to provide some numbers that would tell which symbols are more difficult for people to remember correctly. it's useful info for teachers.

so how are success counted for an individual

oh interesting, kana to romaji vs romaji to kana

taylor - individualy it's calculated using local browser cache, it simply remembers the amount of correct and total answers and then outputs the percentage. and on each "answer", database correct/total value gets incremented.

if an individual repeats the test can they inflate the success counts?

11:54 AM

yes. because every "answer" gets recorded.

and I mean, it's more of a place to practise. it's not really meant to be a test, since you can practise into infinity. there is no "end" of session or something like that. (at least for now, I will probably implement something like that in the future though)

yeah, so, the goal is to practice until you get it right

yes. until the person feels he knows it "good enough" for himself.

exactly, so they will repeat the tests until they reliably receive 100% on each test

perhaps. but I gess they will get tired of a certain symbol before they achieve that.. :D and once you answer a symbol with a wrong answer, you can never get to 100% again. 99.999999% yes, but 100% nope. and yes, I should look into that, now I see where you are going. thnx :)

yeah im just not sure what the global statistics refer too

and thats why lolz

12:02 PM

I'll make a better description for that subpage.

i like the " which approach (kana to roumaji, roumaji to kana.. different difficulty) would be more successful", it sounds interesting, but what exactly do you mean by this?

so, we would like to see if people will have more success by practising flashcards that show kana symbol and the answers are presented with roumaji, or on the other side if they are presented with roumaji/voce flashcards and kana answers. and how different will their success be when they are practising under higher difficulty.

it's simply a different way of perceiving the information, and one might be easier for non-japanese people than the other

yeah thats a very good question

whats the null hypothesis?

my guess is that it probably won't be very different for different flashcard types. but I expect lower success rates for higher difficulties and lower rates for similar looking symbols.

12:18 PM

so, since a subject who has already literate in kana<->romanji conversion would always get 100%, your hypothesis is about learning and acquisition and not performance/competance

I don't want to be a "negative nancy" or anything, and I get that you just need to do something on this level for your degree thesis, but I actually think it's counter productive to put so much emphasis on kana learning.. I'd rather compare success rates between two groups; one where this was portrayed as the simplest thing ever (as it is) and one where students were fed a bunch of information about "how to learn" and common pitfalls and whatnot.

The "just do it" approach would prevail I think :P

comparing multiple groups doesn't present any technical problems though

@gibbon "think it's counter productive to put so much emphasis on kana learning" not if its a project for a university level class lolz

@taylor that's what I'm saying :)

12:34 PM

@pootzko I like the study, but insofar as you've disclosed, i dont see how the simple success/fail counts reflect learning as opposed to performance

since this is a CS project im guessing the focus is more on the nuts and bolts of the program, and statistical analysis

sorry, *and not statistical analysis

Yes and regarding the nuts and bolts, it seems very easy to manufacture some post requests and mess up the global score. :P

@taylor - yes, it's more about learning, and less about performance. but it's even more about providing people with a platform that could aid them in learning by providing something a little bit smarter than just plain old random-based questions. so the statistics are in place to do that, to provide us with some feedback. it's less about the statistics themselves since it is an IT and not linguistics project after all. :)

(although a friend of mine that studies linguistics and japanology said she is more than eager to look at these statistics once a certain amount of people visit the site …

12:50 PM

yeah, i'd love to see the results of such a study, but the thing is im having trouble understanding how the global statistics will indicate a systematic difference between hiragana and katakana

nor how the statistics reflect anything about learning and not performance

as it is, i think your global statistics will tend towards 100% for every category

perhaps yes. I went with an idea that no one would just want to sit out there and bump his score just for the sake of the score.. I thought people would just practise until they feel comfortable with a certain symbol. but yes, if I don't somehow limit the amount of repeats - people might just keep on practising and scores will go up.. thanks for the feedback, I'll think about this :)

1:33 PM

@pootzko well its an interesting study for sure, but i guess a completely rigorous statistical analysis would be a bit laborious and off topic for your project. but if you put raw data up on your site after a couple of months, i'd be interested in testing my own ideas. i bookmarked your site :)

1:44 PM

@taylor - thanks =) and sure, i'll put the data online for anyone interested after there is more of it. if I forget, and you remember this sometime in the future, just drop me an email, and I'll provide you with the data.

9:15 PM

Hey all :)

'morning

Good afternoon?

close enuf

:P

9:35 PM

hello

lies!

all of them?

all except the purple ones

yeah those ones seem pretty trustworthy

Trying to decide what I should put in as the last line of my proposed job description for a 2 year assignment to Japan

9:38 PM

Will it affect your actual job?

youre the employer here?

No... I'm an employee, asking for an assignment

"Thank you for your consideration"

Always a good one :P

EOF

9:39 PM

"goodbye and thanks for all the fish"

yes ^

What was that, the dolphins?

it was the イルカ

so yes

however the existential status of dolphins is still doubted by the japanese, as embodied in the popular aphorism "イルカはいるか"

oh... "Assist with personal areas of firmware expertise (AE, hardware interpreter compiler, Channel, internal system compilers)"... forgot to actually list something that resembled "make firmware"

... you know... my job :)

9:45 PM

Just write "fuck around in Japan"

"i usually don't make mistakes"

I actually have a month of vacation saved up... I just might do that for a bit :)

We recently lost 3 days of vacation given per year (due to a corporate takeover)... I'd complain... but it's a bit hard to do so when I seem to be piling up spare days that I have no intention of using

But you'd still get paid for unused vacation days, no?

If you decide to not pile them on to next year.

I don't actually know if that's an option. It probably is

Like I get 25 days/year, but I may only transfer 5 days to next year.. If there's spare days beyond that, I simply get the money.

9:50 PM

heh... I think I get about half that, but there's no limit on transfers

I see

mutters something about Europeans

:P

Then again... the US is strange that way. We have just about every imaginable vacation system... somewhere.

I heard you also have no government-enforced rules about one's right to vacation.. ie. employers could force employees to work all year round.

..not that I think that happens a lot, but just saying.

9:54 PM

I suspect that's true. I've never heard of a legal minimum in vacation time. You'll note that it doesn't really happen... and therefore the European laws about that are pointless... or perhaps they just need it, whereas we don't.

Yeah it's true.

Except, well.. I wouldn't have 25 days unless the government enforced it. :P

Also... such laws tend to screw up alternatives. For example, is a company that has no vacation time, but no mandatory time-at-work (like alot of tech companies) in violation? Common sense says no... but lawyers rarely agree with that.

Interesting.. Though how common is it with no mandatory time, at all? I mean flex time is one thing, but nothing mandatory at all?

Depends on the industry, I've worked at one place that did it that way.

I think Zappos is the one that keeps getting credit for it in media coverage...

Sounds pretty nice though.. But I guess the company would just have to adapt to local customs/laws in such cases.

9:59 PM

It sounds great, but it matters less than you think it would. I would find it very difficult to get everything that I need to do... done... if I was taking 10% of the year off.

What tends to happen is pretty obvious... regardless of the system, everyone takes major holidays off... and then there's a sprinkling of long weekends throughout the rest of the year.

True.. I think regular flex time with some core hours is "the way to go".. (optimally with the option to work from home when needed of course)

Depends again on the industry. My last job required a cleanroom on a pretty regular basis. This one has north of a half-million in electronic diagnostics equipment on my workbench, a bit hard to do either of these remotely. :)

true.. :)

I think we scared taylor and silvermaple away.

probably

well... that's good enough, sent it off

10:14 PM

grats

I guess..

Now just lay back