Nandemonai's log (Mandarin, German, Tadoku)

[Nandemonai]

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장녀   長女


Just curious, what's the meaning of that word which has the Kanji for "long woman"?

It means the eldest daughter in a family. 長男 means the eldest son. I hope Nandemonai doesn't mind me answering here.

No problem! I've been a bit busy and haven't been able to keep this thread up to date. Will try to do so this weekend.

[Nandemonai]

I should've gotten around to updating my log much earlier. Better late than never I suppose?

There's been a lot of changes in my life in the past couple months. I graduated from college in June and went to Tokyo to job hunt in September. I managed to land a programming job there and will move there next Sunday.

My language learning has somewhat taken a backseat during this time. I used Japanese a lot during my time in Tokyo, interviewing almost daily in the language. I managed to keep up my reading/listening in it too, but I didn't bother to track it. Reviewing Talk To Me In Korean level 6 at the moment and will later this week start working on my Anki backlog. I will be satisfied if that can be cleared by the end of the year.

[galaxyrocker]

I should've gotten around to updating my log much earlier. Better late than never I suppose?

There's been a lot of changes in my life in the past couple months. I graduated from college in June and went to Tokyo to job hunt in September. I managed to land a programming job there and will move there next Sunday.

My language learning has somewhat taken a backseat during this time. I used Japanese a lot during my time in Tokyo, interviewing almost daily in the language. I managed to keep up my reading/listening in it too, but I didn't bother to track it. Reviewing Talk To Me In Korean level 6 at the moment and will later this week start working on my Anki backlog. I will be satisfied if that can be cleared by the end of the year.

How important was Japanese to you finding a job? I've applied to go over there to teach English, but I'd love to switch to a programming career (and have already done some personal projects and such as well). How hard would it be to do this without a bachelors in Comp Sci (though mine still is in a highly-mathematical STEM field). Do you care if I PM you? I feel it'd be better to discuss questions that way. Thanks!

[Nandemonai]

How important was Japanese to you finding a job? I've applied to go over there to teach English, but I'd love to switch to a programming career (and have already done some personal projects and such as well). How hard would it be to do this without a bachelors in Comp Sci (though mine still is in a highly-mathematical STEM field). Do you care if I PM you? I feel it'd be better to discuss questions that way. Thanks!

It was fairly important to me. I've done the almost all of my interviews in Japanese, and only one in English. Being bilingual opened a lot of doors for me and made the whole process a lot smoother. My experience, despite being a fresh graduate, also worked in my favor, as I've been programming for over a decade now. I don't think the degree matters all that much as long as you can show that you know your stuff. You need to have at least a bachelor degree for the visa, but during the interviews they didn't really ask too much about it.

Feel free to PM me. It might take a night for me to answer as I'll be heading to bed now.

[Nandemonai]

I finally got here in Tokyo and started settling in. I've been noticing that using Japanese has become a lot easier, and I don't need to think that much about it anymore. I've been thinking how I should resume my studies and will write down my plans for the rest of December here. Hopefully, that will keep my accountable and put in the work.

Japanese:
- Catch up with Anki (~1200)
- Finish the novel I'm reading

Korean:
- Catch up with Anki (~1200)
- Listen to Talk To Me In Korean daily
- Review できる韓国語１−２

Chinese:
- Catch up with Anki (~1800)
- Review NPCR1

To catch up with Anki I should reach the following milestones:
10/12: 3500 remaining
17/12: 2500 remaining
24/12: 1250 remaining
31/12: 0 remaining

I plan all of this should be taking around 2 hours/day and put me in a spot where I can tackle new material by the new year.

[Nandemonai]

Down to 3146 pending reviews at the moment, which means I'm on schedule. Been listening to TTMIK as well, currently on level 6 lesson 12. I'm getting used to doing my reviews/listening to TTMIK during my commute. It's not always easy to do my reps during morning rush on the metro in Tokyo that is why I just listen to TTMIK instead.

Last Monday I had my first meeting with other developers, all in Japanese. It was really hardnd I maybe understood about half of what was being said, but I feel that this will get easier as time passes. I get to use a healthy mix of Japanese and English every day. My output is improving, but I feel I will need to do more than just conversing with people (maybe get back to shadowing?).

[Nandemonai]

Hmm, it's been a month since the last update. Time sure flies!

I've caught up with Anki in all three languages and am now in the progress of getting habit of daily reviewing/adding back. Catching up with Korean was especially time consuming, reading full sentences in Korean still takes me quite some time. Despite that I found that my ability in Korean didn't really drop, which was a pleasant surprise. Couldn't say the same for Mandarin though. While I could still understand all the sentences in Core2k, I had forgotten a lot of the readings and tones. This week I finally finished the grammar sentences deck by Evita, which is a major milestone for me. I do have to check if there were any updates to the deck since I haven't updated mine in quite a while. 1852 grammar sentences with 89% mature is even more than I have in my Japanese grammar deck (1549, 100% mature). Haven't gotten around to NPCR1 or reviewing できる韓国語 yet, that will have to be done in the next couple of weeks-months.

Currently I'm just reading in Japanese while keeping up with Anki. I've for the first time read over 1000 book pages in a Tadoku round! Instead of jumping between light novel series I've decided to just stick with one series until I get to the end/catch up with the releases. Started with volume 2 of 無職転生 at the end of December, and am now almost done with volume 5.

Now I'll paste my rough plans for the year that I wrote a couple of weeks ago:

2017 study plan
Korean - 250h
Japanese - 600h
Chinese - 150h

Jan
- Tadoku 100%
- Estimated completion Korean Grammar Sentences by Evita

Feb
- 90 day Korean (30h)
- Estimated completion RTK1

Mar
- 90 day Korean (30h)
- Tadoku 50%

Apr
- 90 day Korean (30h)

May
- Estimated completion core2k Chinese

Jun
- 60 day Japanese (60h)
- JLPT N1 prep
- Tadoku 100%

Jul
- 60 day Japanese (60h)
- JLPT N1 prep

Aug
- Tadoku 50%
- JLPT N1 prep
- 60 day Chinese (30h)

Sep
- 60 day Chinese (30h)
- JLPT N1 prep

Oct
- Tadoku 100%
- JLPT N1 prep
- Estimated completion RTK3

Nov
- JLPT N1 prep

Dec
- JLPT N1
- Estimated completion RTK supplement

90 day challenge Korean:
- Anki throughout the day
- Read 10mins minimum
- 20min listening minimum
- 15mins textbook work minimum

60 day challenge Japanese:
- Anki throughout the day
- Read 30mins minimum
- Listen 1h minimum

60 day challenge Chinese:
- Anki throughout the day
- Read 10mins minimum
- 15mins textbook work minimum

Anki new cards/day:
Japanese: 10
Before Finishing RTK1:
- RTK1: 10
After Finishing RTK1:
- RTK3: 4
- Etc: 6
Korean: 15
Chinese: 20/10
- Core2k: 20
- After completing core2k: 10

Target reading:
Japanese: 50 books, 50 manga volumes
Korean: 1 book, 10 manga volumes
Chinese: 3 manga volumes

Target listening:
Japanese: 200h
Korean: 50h
Chinese: 25h

Resources:
Japanese:
- Native material
- Kanzen Master N2-N1 (refresh)
- Shadowing intermediate-advance
- The Routledge Course in Japanese Translation

Korean:
- できる韓国語・初級２
- できる韓国語・中級１
- できる韓国語・中級２
- Talk To Me In Korean
- KoreanClass101
- Native material (mostly manhwa at this point)
- Dramas? Would have to find some that I like
- ハングル文法 (grammar reference)
- 基本ハングル (grammar reference)

Chinese:
- ChinesePod?
- NHK新中国語入門
- NPCR2

[Nandemonai]

Saw 君の名は yesterday and really enjoyed it. I understood almost everything despite the dialect being used. There was just this one scene where the grandmother mentioned a bunch of names and I lost track of the conversation. The art, music, story, and voice acting were all done very well. I definitely recommend it to those who haven't seen it yet.

Halfway through 無職転生6 now and probably will be able to finish volume 7 in this round of Tadoku as well.

For Korean drama, I recommend City Hunter. Most of the dramas on viking are boring love stories so I was happy that I found that drama one day while scrolling. Tho you will have to pay attention or you will get so lost lol.

Thanks! Will check it out.

[kujichagulia]

君の名は is all the rage here, but so far I've resisted trying to watch it. Even if I did, my wife wouldn't want me to waste money on it!

[Evita]

This week I finally finished the grammar sentences deck by Evita, which is a major milestone for me.

You're the first person I've seen that has finished the deck. How did you find it? Did you feel that some grammar points had too many or too few sentences? Would you agree that the further you get, the less example sentences you need? And what about the order of the grammar points? Or maybe you have some general improvement suggestions? I don't plan to rework the deck, but it's still far from finished so it would be useful for the future.

I have another deck that has almost 1000 sentences, but it focuses on vocabulary, there are no notes about grammar. I haven't published it yet because right now the sentences are in the order I found them, not in the order of difficulty. Still, if you want it I can send it to you.