Language Journal: October 23rd 2019
So, I'm about 40 pages into the 盾の勇者の成り上がり or Rising of the Shield Hero Light Novel.
I have bitten off a lot.
I hope it goes quicker over time. I think it will. But, it remains to be seen.
There are 3 fundamental problems; I leaned too much Furigana in Manga without really noticing, there is apparently still a lot of common words I've never encountered and there are a lot of funky words in a book like this.
The first point I'm getting past. But, it will be a long time before it is a non-issue. Basically, with Furigana, when I hit a word I know, I have the reading beside the word to help me along, and presto, I can blaze through words I already know with only the rarest of times causing me to look them up.
In a book like this, without that crutch, there are a lot of common words where I either don't know them at first sight, or doubt myself. Words like 何処 for instance. In a lot of reading material I'm used to this is just written in Hiragana anyway. And, when it is written with the Kanji, it pretty much always has the reading beside it. So, it was a little humbling when I had to stare at the word for a minute the first time I encountered it in the book AND double check my suspicion for a word like どこ (AKA "where").
But, as I get further in the book, that does appear to be happening less and less. I'm slowly getting more confident and committing more readings and kanji to memory. Though, it shows I never thoroughly committed many to memory in the past, and there are bound to be many more.
The next problem is unavoidable. But frustrating. My dictionary tells me whether a word is common or not. And, it is hard to have studied thousands, maybe even 10 thousand+ plus vocab words, and have a decent chunk of the words I stumble on be words I've simply never encountered that are also apparently common.
This is slowing down a bit as well. But, some of that is simply domain specific repetition. In short, both authors and genres of books tend to use linguistic patterns. So, I could pick up my next LN after this and feel this particular sting all over again. But, it is getting easier for now, and that is satisfying.
Lastly, is something I can at least identify with as I remember reading books as a kid and hitting these strange genre specific word. As a 5th grader for instance, I remember having to look up words like "epaulettes". And that is the sort of word we're talking about in this last category. It is fantasy story, and so I've already seen 3 different permutations of words for "armour" for instance in this book. Not something I would like encounter in a sports manga or a newspaper.
Right now I've upped my pace from aiming for one page a day to two. And I'm still re-reading my last page as well as building out a deck of cards of the common words I stumble on.
In short I think this is money well spent. For not much more than a Box of Manga shipment, I could be busy for several months.
I have bitten off a lot.
I hope it goes quicker over time. I think it will. But, it remains to be seen.
There are 3 fundamental problems; I leaned too much Furigana in Manga without really noticing, there is apparently still a lot of common words I've never encountered and there are a lot of funky words in a book like this.
The first point I'm getting past. But, it will be a long time before it is a non-issue. Basically, with Furigana, when I hit a word I know, I have the reading beside the word to help me along, and presto, I can blaze through words I already know with only the rarest of times causing me to look them up.
In a book like this, without that crutch, there are a lot of common words where I either don't know them at first sight, or doubt myself. Words like 何処 for instance. In a lot of reading material I'm used to this is just written in Hiragana anyway. And, when it is written with the Kanji, it pretty much always has the reading beside it. So, it was a little humbling when I had to stare at the word for a minute the first time I encountered it in the book AND double check my suspicion for a word like どこ (AKA "where").
But, as I get further in the book, that does appear to be happening less and less. I'm slowly getting more confident and committing more readings and kanji to memory. Though, it shows I never thoroughly committed many to memory in the past, and there are bound to be many more.
The next problem is unavoidable. But frustrating. My dictionary tells me whether a word is common or not. And, it is hard to have studied thousands, maybe even 10 thousand+ plus vocab words, and have a decent chunk of the words I stumble on be words I've simply never encountered that are also apparently common.
This is slowing down a bit as well. But, some of that is simply domain specific repetition. In short, both authors and genres of books tend to use linguistic patterns. So, I could pick up my next LN after this and feel this particular sting all over again. But, it is getting easier for now, and that is satisfying.
Lastly, is something I can at least identify with as I remember reading books as a kid and hitting these strange genre specific word. As a 5th grader for instance, I remember having to look up words like "epaulettes". And that is the sort of word we're talking about in this last category. It is fantasy story, and so I've already seen 3 different permutations of words for "armour" for instance in this book. Not something I would like encounter in a sports manga or a newspaper.
Right now I've upped my pace from aiming for one page a day to two. And I'm still re-reading my last page as well as building out a deck of cards of the common words I stumble on.
In short I think this is money well spent. For not much more than a Box of Manga shipment, I could be busy for several months.
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