Maya's adventures en français + 日本語で

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PolyglotMaya
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Maya's adventures en français + 日本語で

Postby PolyglotMaya » Mon Jan 04, 2016 10:25 pm

(The title of this thread annoys me... in Japanese, 日本語で should be at the beginning of the sentence, as in 日本語での冒険. Anywho...)

Welcome to Maya's language log! I will mostly be focusing on Japanese this year, but I will also be maintaining and gently sprinkling some more advanced vocabulary on my French. Some background and current goals for both languages:

French

I started studying French when I was about 12, and I became fluent around 14-15. Mostly through self-study, though I did also have tutors at various points.

I feel very comfortable using French; I've taken university courses and written exams in it.

I don't have any specific goals for my French this year; I just want to maintain what I have and continue to increase my vocabulary.


Japanese

I also started studying Japanese when I was 12, though I've stopped and started so many times that it's impossible to say how long I've actually been at it. Maybe 3 years?

I'm at a pretty solid N3 level (click the link to see what that means), maybe even a bit above that. I can have basic conversations, read a lot of manga without a dictionary, and understand a lot of blogs, song lyrics and other things on the internet.

My goal for this year is to study at least 2,000 kanji (just the writing and meaning, not necessarily the pronounciation) via the Heisig method, and to get to a solid N2 level. Assuming I don't stop from now on, I have a vague desire to take the JLPT N1 (the highest level) in December 2017.

じゃ、がんばりましょう! :)
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: 9 / 200 French active listening

: 464 / 2000 Japanese kanji

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PolyglotMaya
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Re: Maya's adventures en français + 日本語で

Postby PolyglotMaya » Mon Jan 04, 2016 10:25 pm

I've recently discovered Anki... and holy shit, I cannot praise it enough!

Now, you're probably thinking, where the hell have you been, Maya? The answer is: using Mnemosyne, like an idiot. No, really, I'm not knocking Mnemosyne - if it works for some people, that's great. But it wasn't working for me, and the really sad thing was that I mistakenly thought that I just didn't love kanji or the Japanese language enough. Not so - I love Japanese to pieces. It was Mnemosyne that wasn't working for me - that, and the fact that I was entering these really long sentences into it. No good.

I've been entering shorter sentences, including phrases, and also experimenting with the awesome "Cloze" option, which allows you to blank out some of information. So for example, instead of entering そんな嫌味な言い方するな on the front side, I have:

Front:

そんな嫌[...]な言い方するな

Back:



嫌味な (いや・みな) - disagreeable

~

I'm finding that this allows for more active and involved learning, compared to the old school sentence method, which was very passive.

In 3 days, I've entered 45 kanji and 75 sentences without it feeling like much work at all. Hallelujah!


In other news:

-- I've been re-watching Nana... again. And simultaneously re-reading the manga. They kept all of the dialogue exactly the same, so reading the text after watching it is a great way to reinforce all of the vocabulary and phrases I'm picking up. It's excellent food for Anki, and of course, for me :)

-- I wrote my first (Japanese) entry on lang-8! http://lang-8.com/1475094 In almost 600 words, it looks like I only made 3 mistakes? (One of the corrections was a preference thing rather than a mistake.) But only one person has edited it so far, and maybe he was being lazy.
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: 9 / 200 French active listening

: 464 / 2000 Japanese kanji

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Ezy Ryder
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Re: Maya's adventures en français + 日本語で

Postby Ezy Ryder » Mon Jan 04, 2016 11:53 pm

AFAIK JLPT doesn't require you to write characters by hand; and I can tell you from my own experience, that studying writing doesn't make you remember them better. Also, since when actually trying to write something by hand, we don't have the other character(s) of a word providing a "hint" of sorts, haven't you considered clozing entire words, as opposed to just single characters? I always thought that made it a bit more realistic.

Good luck with your studies, and 頑張ってね~
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阿波
: 1250 / 1000010k SRS Challenge :
: 3750 / 48084,808 漢字 (handwriting) :

Rotasu
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Re: Maya's adventures en français + 日本語で

Postby Rotasu » Tue Jan 05, 2016 1:18 am

Urgh with so many people praising Anki, It's making me want to just suck it up and use it until I'm intermediate in Japanese x.x

But then again, in a few weeks, those reviews might kill you so be ready :D Maybe google some more on Anki for tips to avoid burnout.
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PolyglotMaya
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Re: Maya's adventures en français + 日本語で

Postby PolyglotMaya » Tue Jan 05, 2016 4:20 pm

Ezy Ryder wrote:AFAIK JLPT doesn't require you to write characters by hand; and I can tell you from my own experience, that studying writing doesn't make you remember them better. Also, since when actually trying to write something by hand, we don't have the other character(s) of a word providing a "hint" of sorts, haven't you considered clozing entire words, as opposed to just single characters? I always thought that made it a bit more realistic.

Good luck with your studies, and 頑張ってね~

I'm not focusing on the JLPT per se; it's just something I'm considering doing, to give myself a timeline and something concrete to work towards. My real goal is just to know the language backwards and forwards, and I like clozing out a single kanji because:

1) It's simpler, and
2) It allows me to focus more intensely on one kanji at a time, including its readings (on/kun).

If it's important enough/necessary, I don't mind making two seperate cards, one for each kanji in a two-kanji word. But usually, I just pick the kanji I don't know as well (or don't know at all).

That said, I have clozed entire words at times, if they're only made up of one kanji and there's some grammatical point to it:

Front:

"I wanted people to think I'm a genius"

天才と[...]から

Back:

思われたかった
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: 9 / 200 French active listening

: 464 / 2000 Japanese kanji

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PolyglotMaya
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Re: Maya's adventures en français + 日本語で

Postby PolyglotMaya » Tue Jan 05, 2016 4:23 pm

Rotasu wrote:Urgh with so many people praising Anki, It's making me want to just suck it up and use it until I'm intermediate in Japanese x.x

But then again, in a few weeks, those reviews might kill you so be ready :D Maybe google some more on Anki for tips to avoid burnout.

It's funny you say that; I woke up this morning to a whole bunch of reviews to do, and that's just for sentences (not including kanji)... and thought "fuck".

Haha. The good thing about Anki is that the "review in 10 mins" option makes it easier to do it a few times over the course of the day, instead of feeling pressured to do everything in one sitting, as with Mnemosyne.
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: 9 / 200 French active listening

: 464 / 2000 Japanese kanji

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PolyglotMaya
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Re: Maya's adventures en français + 日本語で

Postby PolyglotMaya » Thu Jan 07, 2016 1:21 am

Today's been a bit of a slow day - I've been working on something language-related that I hope to share tomorrow.

Still, I was able to re-watch a French movie (La Doublure... never gets old even though it's from 2006) and get some more active listening in.

These days, I'm writing new French vocabulary words and phrases on paper flashcards. Since the number of new words I encounter is pretty low, I can keep up with it.

Bon, à demain!
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: 9 / 200 French active listening

: 464 / 2000 Japanese kanji

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PolyglotMaya
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Re: Maya's adventures en français + 日本語で

Postby PolyglotMaya » Thu Jan 07, 2016 6:42 pm

Alrighty, so there's something I'd like to share with everyone...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHdGiNXTheA

That's right - it's me speaking 5 languages :) Turn on CC when I start speaking Russian for English subtitles.

Feel free to give the video a "like" and subscribe to the channel (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCedlM0 ... HbD32WVitA) because I will be uploading more videos - things about how I learn languages, what works and what doesn't, reviews of materials, etc.

I will occasionally be re-posting some of my videos here, but I will also be posting a lot of things that aren't in any video. I want to keep this log primarily text-based.

Anyway, thanks, everyone!
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: 464 / 2000 Japanese kanji

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PolyglotMaya
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Re: Maya's adventures en français + 日本語で

Postby PolyglotMaya » Sat Jan 09, 2016 1:57 pm

So, something pretty exciting has happened.

On Thursday, I went to a local event called 一木会 (いち・もく・かい). It's a get-together that happens on the first Thursday of each month (hence the name) and is organized by a local Japanese group.

I spent the evening talking to various people, both Japanese and foreigners, and realized that my Japanese is better than I've been giving myself credit for :o But here's the best part:

I added several people from the event as Facebook friends. One of them reached out to me yesterday and started talking about my video (see the above post). She asked if I still had the contact information of my old French tutors; I answered honestly and said I did not. But then I had an idea. I offered to teach her French, for free, but in exchange she would have to help me with my Japanese. She agreed! So now it looks like I will have a native Japanese speaker who I can touch base with on a regular basis and ask questions, etc :D

As I told her, I don't really need lessons per se (and even if I did, native speakers without a background in teaching or linguistics tend to be useless at formal grammar stuff). But I do have questions that sometimes come up from things I see/hear/read in native materials (e.g. what's the difference between two similar words?), and I'm confident that she can help me with stuff like that.

Needless to say, I'm very excited :)
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: 9 / 200 French active listening

: 464 / 2000 Japanese kanji

Rotasu
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Re: Maya's adventures en français + 日本語で

Postby Rotasu » Sat Jan 09, 2016 2:46 pm

Good for you, Maya!

It is true that you cant think that every native speaker has the skills to teach their language. I used to see a lot of people on HelloTalk start a conversation with, "Can you teach me English, I'll teach you Japanese!? :D" Its nice that you now have someone to go to for your questions -jealous- xP

Maybe it time to jump back on to HelloTalk and find some JP friends xS
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