Three's Company [deu + pol + gle]

[tangleweeds]

I'm following your project and other log with interest. I like Minna's approach a lot, and the Kodansha course too. I just wish the print in both was a little larger, as my eyes are getting old. I now have a fancy lighted measuring thang to cope.

I might also pick up the "Shadowing Let's Speak Japanese" books

I went ahead and bought them.

Thanks, I'd never heard of these before, and they look interesting. Oh no, more to add to my omgjapan.com cart!

Speaking of which, I had been planning on using my stimulus $ to round out my Minna level 1 collection (only 3 more to go!), but decided that, given my health issues, it was more responsible to round out my Iyengar yoga prop collection instead.

Totally unrelated wanderlust:
Since we seem to have similar tastes in textbooks, what beginner texts might you recommend for Biblical Greek and Hebrew?

I don't want to go far enough into religion to stretch the rules, but I'm the type of Episcopalian who has most of the Jesus Seminar publications on my shelf, will confess to enjoying Ehrman and Spong more than Crossan and Borg (though they're *all& there in my kindle), and, given all that, would love to be able to go to the source(s) and read for myself.

[księżycowy]

For Hebrew, I cannot recommend Biblical Hebrew: A Text and Workbook by Kittel, et al. enough. It makes the grammar as painless as possible. Plus it has you actually reading from the BHS and actually helps a bit in understanding some of the commentary in the BHS. But there's also the standard Introduction to Biblical Hebrew by Lambdin that I could recommend if you don't find Kittel et al. to your liking.

As for Koine Greek specifically, I have to say I have yet to find a textbook I love. I used Basics of Biblical Greek by Mounce during my graduate studies. It's good. When I get back into Greek, I've decided to learn Classical/Attic first, which I feel has better resources. For Attic I like JACT's Reading Greek, and (oddly enough) Mastronade's Introduction to Attic Greek. But you sound like you'd probably rather just stick with Koine, I'm guessing.

I'm always trying to check out new textbooks for both Hebrew and Koine Greek (kind of a hobby of mine), so all of this could change!

[Raconteur]

So far, I am enjoying the 365 challenge, and am finding it motivating to keep me at studying Japanese! Here's hoping this enthusiasm lasts.

Sounds exciting, I hope it keeps you motivated. What is the 365 challenge, is there a page with official rules or a list of participants – you got me curious – also, now that it is Jan 5, is it too late to join? Technically, only 360 days left!

[księżycowy]

https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 21&t=16397

There you go! And, not it's not too late, in fact!

[księżycowy]

I meant to reply to these this as well, but somehow they got lost in the shuffle, sorry tangleweeds:

Thanks, I'd never heard of these before, and they look interesting. Oh no, more to add to my omgjapan.com cart!

To be completely honest, I bought them because they looked interesting to me as well. I have no idea what the content is like. For the price, I've spent more on worse I'm sure.

Interestingly enough, I was going to buy them from omgjapan.com, until I saw the shipping cost! $30+ for two books! That was almost the same cost as the books themselves! Geez! If I'm buying from Japan, I usually either go through Amazon.jp or the US Amazon site. Those have decent shipping prices.

[tangleweeds]

If I'm buying from Japan, I usually either go through Amazon.jp or the US Amazon site. Those have decent shipping prices.

I usually put together a large enough order from them that the shipping isn't quite so painful, but it's even more expensive now than it had been in the past! They were saying like $35 in shipping for the Minna order I didn't choose to make after all.

My brother in Japan says that shipping around Asia is all screwy from COVID regulations. He can't order anything from Korea at all, and his Christmas package to me arrived a couple of days ago, looking like it had either been run over then attacked by hyenas, or else (more likely) been the cause of a very expensive jam-up in the sorting machinery.

But the real question: are more Amazon.jp sellers (or Amazon.jp itself???) willing to ship here now? It used to be such a pain I'd stopped even trying to shop there years and years ago, and long since defaulted to YesAsia and OMGJapan. So my experience might be quite out of date, huh?

[księżycowy]

That's a good point. I know that I have had recent success (in the last 2-3 weeks) having Japanese sellers on US Amazon ship me things. I also just completed my transaction for Classical Japanese Grammar Illustrated with Texts, which will also ship from Japan. I haven't tried with Amazon Japan recently, however. I imagine, given my general success with having things shipped from Japan, it should be the same. (I usually go for Amazon.jp itself, rather than any sellers, given not all of them ship internationally)

[księżycowy]

Ok, I have received my order of Japanese Pronunciation Practice Through Shadowing by 3A. It's an interesting book, and will both be a bit challenging, but also very enlightening I think.

It typically has a dialogue (with pitch curves above the sentences), and then it goes over a particular pronunciation point with some specific examples (usually from the dialogue). Then it gives short exchanges and other shadowing exercises. I think the methodology is pretty solid, and look forward to this!

The reason I say challenging is because, while it does have a translation booklet included, it only translates the dialogues at the start of the lessons, not any of the pronunciation points. So as I'm hoping to use this at least a little while I'm learning some basic Japanese, I'll have to translate the pronunciation points as I go.

An update to come tomorrow!

[księżycowy]

(From my 365 Challenge thread)

Do you find tracking the time that you study as opposed to writing about your studying is more helpful?

As the 365 challenge (which is what I'm tracking in that thread) is about studying for at least 30 mins a day all year, I want to keep track of the amount of time I spend each day. So in that light: yes, it's very helpful.

I frequently post anything I want to write about my studies here, as I don't want to get my progress for the challenge lost in a bunch of other posts. But even more than that, I don't usually find myself writing a big post on every little thing I've done. I usually just post some stuff once a week or so.

[księżycowy]

Time to check in with my goals for this week!

Goals through 01/10/2021:
Japanese

• Minna no Nihongo - Lesson 3
  
  • Main Textbook Drills
  • Main Textbook Exercises
  • Bunkei Renshuucho
  • Hyoujun Mondaishuu
  • Shokyu de Yomeru
  • Choukai Tasuku
• Minna no Nihongo - Lesson 4
  
  • Main Textbook Drills
  • Main Textbook Exercises
  • Bunkei Renshucho
  • Hyoujun Mondaishuu
  • Shokyu de Yomeru
  • Choukai Tasuku
• Kodansha's Hiragana Workbook
  
  • Lesson 2
• Kodansha's Katatana Workbook
  
  • Lesson 2
• 桜 by Ask Publishing*

Bungo

• A Handbook to Classical Japanese
  
  • Pgs 24-28
• Classical Japanese: A Grammar
  
  • Pgs 24-28

As can be seen, I completed Lesson 3 of MnN (including all of the supplementary workbooks), and completed lesson 2 in both kana workbooks. I'm quite happy with my progress thus far. It's not quite the clip I was hoping to go at, but it's still very respectable non-the-less. I will continue to work towards doing some more studying per day, and see if I can get up to two lessons in a week, but I'm not going to kill myself to get there.

On the Kanji front, I've gone over the first 35 kanji in the Kodansha Kanji Learner's Course. I read the entries in the course (for about 5ish minutes), and then mostly rely on Anki to practice. I have Anki set on 5 new Kanji a day, which I think is more than enough. At this point I am simply using this as a way to recognize the kanji and it's meaning. The pronunciation(s) are largely secondary at this point, and I don't feel bad at all about "cheating" by looking at the pronunciation of the sample vocabulary on any give card.

Unfortunately, I did not do anything for Bungo this week. I would like to start going through the Programmed Introduction I just received, but I'm not sure if I will be able to do that at my current skill of not. A little more exploration of the text is in order. I think at least for this week, I'll leave this off my goals list.