Languages and Life: Gary's log (Italian, Spanish, German, Japanese, bits of French)

[garyb]

If you want to take a practice exam, they have two past exams from each level on the official website. If you need more than that, you can find an unofficial upload of every past exam if you search Reddit.

Thanks! For now I just tried the sample questions rather than a full test. I got 11 out of 14, but it wasn't quick and the main thing I took from it is that my reading speed still needs to improve a lot: in a test situation I might not have enough time just to read all the instructions and questions! Though after a few practice tests I'm sure you recognise the common questions quickly. And it did show a few vocabulary and grammar gaps, and I needed to listen to some of the listening questions two or three times to be sure of what was being asked.

The spaces threw me a bit. I saw "べんきょうして　います", and for a good few seconds wondered if it was some grammatical structure with the て-form and いる that I hadn't come across, before realising that it was just the progressive form of the verb which I always think of as a single word, "べんきょうしています" (and I'm still doubting myself). Reminds me of another reason I abandoned DuoLingo quickly: its division of words was often more confusing than useful.

There were also some words and even grammar points that I'm quite sure weren't covered by Genki but I knew from other places. 出来る (to be able to) for sure. Although I don't think that Genki actually claims to cover N5, and the verdict I see online is that it alone might be enough for a pass but not for a "good" pass.

Maybe I'll look at full papers later, but based on this I'd want to practise more reading and polish up my vocab before taking a test. Still, it's a decent result for going in blind.

[golyplot]

The instructions are always the same, so you don't have to read them if you've taken any practice tests.

[golyplot]

I don't think it's actually exponential, but even N5 is harder than you might think so if you haven't taken a practice exam yet, you may be in for a rude awakening.

Most likely Especially since I did say that I still don't feel I have a good grasp on what I've covered so far. I might look at example questions later today.

In my case, I passed the N2 after four years. If it were really exponential, that would imply that I was already at N5 after only three months which definitely wasn't the case.

Yeah, damn, I think I'm letting my Romance-language experience especially Italian influence my thinking too much again. Of course the beginner levels go much faster than the higher ones when you already know a related language or two. It's hard to measure with my German since my studies have been so on-and-off and my level is still quite low, but it's felt much more linear so far. Otherwise I'd be looking at an extremely long time to get to B2 or even B1.

After looking back at my log, maybe it was more exponential than I thought. It looks like I got a plausibly-passing score on an N5 practice exam after four months and the N4 after one year. Of course it's hard because there's no way to actually know whether a given score would have been enough to pass or not.

[garyb]

The Genki 2 books are on the way. While I'm a big proponent of textbooks, in a way I'm quite enjoying being textbook-free and learning in a more free-form way for a week or two. I can see how you can pick up a lot just from input and checking references as needed, at least once you have a decent base. I'm also seeing more of the beauty of Japanese grammar, where it seems like many of the structures can be plugged into each other in quite a neat way to build more complicated sentences. Not that I'm claiming it'll always be nice, of course.

I wish I had discovered these easy comprehensible input videos earlier. I'll never be a believer in input-only methods, but level-appropriate input is always a powerful thing and the one good effect of the bizarre recent resurgence of interest in these methods in certain online circles is that a lot of comprehensible-input material for beginners is being produced. We can benefit from that without subscribing to the religion.

I've also watched some JLPT N5 listening exercise example videos where the audio is played once, then the correct answer is shown, then the audio is played again with subtitles, translations, and explanations (example). Some are quite unforgiving and require picking up on a small detail or even listening for numbers and doing a bit of mental arithmetic. Vocabulary-wise there's little or nothing I've never seen before, but certainly some semi-familiar words that I don't always remember.

Even though I'm not planning to take a test, it's nice to do exercises like this to get an idea of my real level. Maybe I'll look up some A2 German or B2 Spanish ones too. My listening clearly needs more work, but at least now I know the phrase "女の人と男の人が話しています” ("a woman and a man are talking") off by heart since every question seems to start with that or some variation of it: perhaps they're talking in a store, or by telephone.

Last night I and some others ended up chatting with a couple of German tourists in a pub, and I was getting ready to bust out some German especially since they were struggling a bit to understand me in English but then I decided against it. They were a guy who was one of these people who feels the need to talk at length about their opinions to anybody who'll listen (and most of these "opinions" were just truisms or common sense) and a woman who was clearly tired and just wanted to go home. And it was getting late for me too. I figured that a positive reaction to my German knowledge would just prolong the whole thing, which wasn't really in anyone's interest. Maybe I could come out with some wise-seeming quip about how part of knowing how to speak a language is knowing when not to speak it...

[garyb]

Just picking up on something from a couple of posts ago:

The spaces threw me a bit. I saw "べんきょうして　います", and for a good few seconds wondered if it was some grammatical structure with the て-form and いる that I hadn't come across, before realising that it was just the progressive form of the verb which I always think of as a single word, "べんきょうしています" (and I'm still doubting myself).

Yesterday I watched some of Cure Dolly's videos and she in fact presented the progressive form as て-form plus いる, so considering it as separate words does make sense. At first I thought this was some vindication for her idea of textbooks not teaching properly, but I then looked up the relevant point in Genki and the very first sentence said that the progressive form uses いる as a helper verb. So apparently I had just completely forgotten that part! It all makes a lot more sense now, especially in the short form in quoted speech.

It feels silly to forget about such basic and important details, but it happens and that's exactly why I'm doing this sweep-up/consolidation work after finishing the book! And using a different resource that looks at things from a slightly different perspective can be better than just revising the same one and thinking you've seen it all before, even if one isn't necessarily "better" than the other.

[garyb]

Japanese

The Genki 2 books arrived a few days ago, but the weekend's weather was too nice to get stuck into them! I did have time yesterday afternoon, but after a couple of days of surfing and sitting in the sun I didn't feel up to it. I know what my plans are for this evening, though!

Spanish

I finally got to see La mesita del comedor, which my film-buff friends had been going on about. I recommend it if you like your comedy very dark!

I also gave up on Valeria again, after three episodes which is as far as I got on my first attempt last year. I liked the idea of a romcom series for colloquial language, but as a show it's just plain bad. Not even bad in a good way; it crosses the line from cheesy to stupid by a long margin. I won't repeat my recent rant about how Spanish-speakers can't seem to get this genre right while the Italians do manage it, but I was wondering whether the Italian romcoms I watched were actually that good or if I was just so love in with the language and culture that I was able to enjoy them for that aspect...

Instead I started watching Cuerpo en llamas, which is a crime series but much of the focus is on the relationships between the characters so it has plenty of colloquial dialogue.

Finding TV series in Spanish to my tastes has always been a challenge compared to the other languages I've studied, which can seem surprising for such a big language with so much content. Many start off well but go off the tracks (La casa de papel, Elite, Vis a vis...); others are well-made but not my thing (Paquita salas, Las chicas del cable, Gran hotel...); and some are just unwatchably awful like Valeria and the Mexican telenovelas I've tried. I suppose there's always the old standby of Aquí no hay quien viva, but most of it's been removed from YouTube now and I was a bit bored of it anyway.

Fortunately there's a lifetime's worth of good cinema, which is the only way I'll manage this Super Challenge even if films are less convenient to access than Netflix series. Netflix does have a handful of films, but aside from its in-house productions which are usually solid enough it's not exactly known for quality.

I'm making good progress with reading Dance dance dance in Spanish, and enjoying it much more than A wild sheep chase. There was a bit where the protagonist is being interrogated by the police and when he says that he spent the evening reading Kafka's "The Trial" the policeman writing the statement has to pause and ask his colleague what the kanji for "trial" is. That reminds me that ever since visiting the Kafka museum in Prague I've been meaning to read that, and that was about ten years ago... Maybe it's something to aspire to in German.

German

Similar issue, I'm again struggling to find something to watch that's suited to my level. I had planned to rewatch How to sell drugs online... fast with Language Reactor but I had misremembered it as having German subtitles, which it doesn't.


I'm not sure how long my Netflix subscription will last since the German choice is small, the Spanish selection mostly isn't for me, and while it's fantastic for Japanese I'm nowhere near ready to immerse myself in native content. Maybe other streaming services are more suited to my needs and interests. I doubt they'll be as good for TL subtitle availability and Language Reactor support, though. I suppose these things are very convenient to have, but people including me were learning languages just fine before they were around so I can't let myself become spoilt.

[DaveAgain]

German

Similar issue, I'm again struggling to find something to watch that's suited to my level. I had planned to rewatch How to sell drugs online... fast with Language Reactor but I had misremembered it as having German subtitles, which it doesn't.


I'm not sure how long my Netflix subscription will last since the German choice is small, the Spanish selection mostly isn't for me, and while it's fantastic for Japanese I'm nowhere near ready to immerse myself in native content. Maybe other streaming services are more suited to my needs and interests. I doubt they'll be as good for TL subtitle availability and Language Reactor support, though. I suppose these things are very convenient to have, but people including me were learning languages just fine before they were around so I can't let myself become spoilt.

I'm watching a documentary series about Japan at the moment, it's on YouTube and has auto-generated subtitles.

[garyb]

I'm watching a documentary series about Japan at the moment, it's on YouTube and has auto-generated subtitles.

Thanks! I did check that out. The German is a bit above my level, and I'm trying to use resources that I can make Anki cards from so the auto-generated subs aren't ideal, but I've bookmarked it for future use since I'm keen to learn more about Japanese history sooner or later. I keep hearing things about various periods of history and realising that I have no idea about them.

I ended up going for King of Stonks on Netflix, which so far is good despite the silly name. Finding a combination of entertainment and useful business/work-related vocabulary is a pleasant surprise.

Japanese

I'm wrapping up WaniKani level 10. It's been rough, and I don't even have the excuse of being away or busy this time. It packed a lot of new material, on top of items from lower levels coming back for review, and all these "scooter" kanji from this and the last couple of levels are easy to mix up: 速, 進, 運, 道, 返, etc.

Genki lesson 13 has gone much more smoothly, at least. The main focus is potential forms of verbs (to be able to); as mentioned I had come across できる (potential form of "to do", which can also be combined with other verbs) enough to know it pretty well by now, and I had seen enough WaniKani example sentences about being able to do things to figure out that potential form is a thing and to have a vague idea of how it's formed for other verbs.

Another thing it covers is the ～そう suffix for "looks like", which again I had encountered enough times to have mostly figured out already. "おいしい" ("tasty") is pretty much the first word I picked up in Japan after "hello" and "thank you", and similarly it's been impossible to miss "おいしそう" ("looks tasty")! And then there's the structure with "みる" for "to try to do", which I praised Michel Thomas for teaching and then mostly forgot about until coming across it a few times recently.

Last night I went to see Haikyu!!: The Dumpster Battle at the cinema. It's based on a manga and anime series that I've never seen, about volleyball which I've not played since high school, so I can hardly claim I was rushing to see it. But it's a quiet weekend and I didn't want to miss a chance for some Japanese immersion. It was very well-made and enjoyable enough, and although it's a direct sequel to the anime it had enough flashback scenes to give an idea of the characters' relationships.

With the sports theme I had expected to hear a lot of English loanwords, but it still surprised me! In particular there were a lot of shouts like "nice serve" and "nice return", although these were often used as encouragement before the fact (meaning "do a nice serve!" etc.) unlike in English where they'd be compliments after the fact, and even positions like "left" and "centre" were in Japan-ified English rather than using the Japanese words.

On the way out I overheard one of the six or so other attendees talking about linguistic differences between the Japanese dialogue and the English subtitles, so he must've been there for the same purpose as me. Which was a good one: I picked up quite a lot of language, and was listening out for things I've been learning recently like potential forms.

I did question my "well-rounded" learning strategy: if I had just focused on comprehension at first, I'd likely be understanding more and experiencing the snowball effect of input becoming more comprehensible, and I don't have any need to speak or write now or soon. And even after working through the Genki 1 exercises and workbook quite intensively, I don't feel that my retention of a lot of the material has been great. But I do genuinely enjoy the production work, and perhaps I'd have retained even less if I hadn't done that work; it's like an experiment with no control, so I can only guess. And one of my reasons for choosing to work through the textbook actively and thoroughly is that rushing through my German books really didn't work out well.

My current method is enjoyable and it's working well-ish, so I don't see any need for radical changes, although the recent addition of comprehensible-input videos and listening exercises has definitely been a good tweak. I'm convinced of the benefits of input, and the more of it I can understand or figure out from context the more of these benefits I can enjoy.