Aozora's Log for Japanese and French

[Aozora]

Thanks for the reply Tuckamore. When I was younger, my attitude towards foreign languages was "of course it's different, it's a different language." So it never bothered me that words, expressions, grammar for Japanese, Korean, etc were completely different from English. I didn't really study French (beyond a brief look) until University. I guess it's just surprising the difference between studying (or reading native content in) a language close to English versus the distant ones I've studied up until French. I'm not going to stay disheartened about it.

I decided to join the April Vocabulary Challenge! I'm going full steam ahead with Japanese vocab again. Currently I find one or two new words per page, sometimes zero. That's pretty good word coverage, but in effect I'm still piling up 100-400 new words per novel, and that's a lot. I'm hoping to make some sort of break through with my reading, getting more exposure to lower frequency words to make them stick.

Japanese

I'm spreading my reading out a bit so that I don't get bogged down with the Murakami book which is a longer slower read. I read 51 pages from a web novel, 12 more pages of 色彩を持たない多崎つくると, and 26 pages of Kagerou Days volume 5. I also read a volume of manga which I didn't mine words from. I drilled 68 words with paper flashcards, and I made a leitner box to manage my paper flashcards.


Unfortunately the past few days I've barely touched French.

[Aozora]

Japanese

I haven't had time for reading this week, but I studied 162 words so far. My leitner box reviews are going very well. The words are gathered from novels I read but didn't fully mine, and LingQ. I still have more words to do today.

French

Hardly time for French either, but I did start listening to Harry Potter. I'm not understanding a lot but I need to increase my listening. It bugs me that I can read and understand The Linguist, but I can't understand just the audio.

[Aozora]

Japanese

I'm still on track with my Japanese vocabulary for April, however, today I had to resort to gathering words from Memrise because I ran out of vocab gathered from my reading. I've been focusing my extra time on another hobby which then only leaves time to catch up on my vocab. I reached 434/1000 words today.

[Aozora]

Japanese

I reached 570/1000 words today for the April challenge. While I was going through a Memrise course looking for new vocab, I noticed two things... one, the course has a fair number of words that I've learned just this month. That overlap is a little encouraging. Two, when I saw the word 嗚咽 on the list at first I thought, I don't know this word or the kanji in it, and then "おえつ" just popped into my head. 嗚咽 is indeed read おえつ. Apparently I studied this word in the past but half forgot it due to not keeping up with reviews. And looking closely I do know those kanji when used in other words (咽ぶ and 鳴く). I found it interesting how my brain took in the entire word without keeping the knowledge of the parts that make up the word. It's similar to knowing a difficult English word on sight, but not remembering how to spell or define it, I guess? Anyway, this experience made me think about studying lower frequency kanji more closely so that I really know them when I see them. In my studies I've been coming across a lot of non-jouyou kanji, including some characters that are literally only used for one word. I've just been drilling them as a whole word, sometimes writing the kanji down a couple times, but I think I'd benefit from some mnemonics and spaced repetition.

I also got some listening in. I've been hearing some of my newer words. I hear 真相 everywhere now. Still having a hard time fitting reading and French into my schedule.

[Aozora]

Japanese

I'm at 834 words for the April Vocabulary Challenge. I'm a little behind with my reviews now as level 3 and 4 have a lot of cards in them. I collected about 200 kanji I'd like to study after the April challenge is over. I binge watched Ajin, and it's available in French on Netlix so I might watch it in French some time.


French

I haven't been reading or studying, but I've done some listening. I listened to a couple more hours of Harry Potter, watched a few hours of Youtube, and listened to some more short audiobooks. I tried watching Voltron (the new one) in French with French subs, but the subs were really too far off from the actual dialogue to follow both at the same time.

[Aozora]

Japanese

A belated update, but I completed my April Vocabulary challenge with 1002/1000 words, and I'm just working on reviews now. I ordered some more light novels and I'm hoping they arrive these week.

French

I started doing grammar exercises again. I got a couple Le Petit Nicholas books with accompanying audio. I'm thinking I'll read them intensively and then listen to the audio while reading along. I've already listened to the audio by itself once. I also watched Voltron season 1 in French with English subs. L1 subs seems to be pretty unpopular, but I find it helpful to skim the subs and match the meaning to what I'm hearing. I know the French will be full of things I wouldn't understand even if I were reading instead of listening. I think the problem with L1 subs is when you're still reading the subs while the characters are speaking, and that can happen with more complex lines.

[Aozora]

Japanese

The books I ordered haven't arrived. They should have arrived by now, I hope they haven't gotten lost in the mail... Maybe next time I'll just pay $$$ and get faster, more secure shipping.

I finished reading Kagerou Days volume 6. There's a 7th volume that came out, but I'm not sure if I'll get it. I'm disappointed with the story telling in this series. After six volumes and about 1200 pages, I have so many questions about the plot. Key characters and events haven't been explained or even introduced. I started reading the series because I wanted to know what happened in the PVs, but things just aren't coming together. I started reading a fantasy novel called 契火の末裔 which I bought years ago but found to challenging to read. I'm hoping I'll have an easier time with it now.

I said before that I'd study the 200 or so kanji I collected from my reading. I've worked on 64 so far. I made paper flash cards, one kanji per card, with one or two word examples. I only use words I know for examples. On the back I have the kanji meaning, the word reading, and if I can, I make a mnemonic. Then they go in my leitner box with my other flash cards.

French

I read only one chapter of Le Petit Nicholas (I read it twice, though). Compared to the nonfiction I was reading on Lingq, it's more difficult. Manageable, but the difficulty makes me not want to pick the book up. I'm going to put more time into reading on LingQ again. I'm continuing with my grammar book exercises. One more chapter and I'll finally finally move on from present tense verb conjugations. I've covered other tenses and grammar rules before, but I'm working through this book from the beginning.

[Aozora]

My books finally arrived! Well, 7/8 of them. The last one is supposed to come in a separate shipment because they couldn't fit it with the rest. I ordered the same number of books as before, but this time I got Harry Potter 3, and it's as thick as two normal size books. I got these titles:

Online! volume 2
Harry Potter 3 (in Japanese of course)
しずかな日々
冷たい校舎の時は止まる 1&2
Boogiepop volumes 4&5
雨の日のアリス (this one hasn't arrived yet)

To my surprise, 冷たい校舎の時は止まる isn't a novel series, it's manga. I just looked it up, and it should be a novel and I just bought a manga adaptation by accident? The two volumes were labeled上 and 下 which I hadn't seen used for manga before. I hope I enjoy it. I like manga, but the text is much sparser when it comes to language exposure.

I have Boogiepop 1-3 already and I plan to reread them before I start vol 4-5.