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vonPeterhof
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Re: ABATT (All Basque All The Time) + MIA (Japanese)

Postby vonPeterhof » Sun Mar 15, 2020 8:38 am

crush wrote:Also, i've watched the first five episodes of Lucky Star. It's not really interesting to me and i don't really like that overly cutesy childy voice acting, it's hard to understand and just seems annoying to me (i'd rather hear a "normal" voice), but i suppose most people don't mind it or else it wouldn't be used so often (almost every anime i've seen has had at least one character who speaks like that). I've been watching about two episodes of 四月は君の嘘 per one episode of Lucky Star in an attempt to get more bang out of my buck for the subs2srs decks (since it can be time consuming making them/formatting others' decks to work well with my setup) ;) After Lucky Star (if i finish it) i may use Doraemon to fill this role, as i don't mind that show as much and the characters are easier to understand.
FWIW Lucky Star changed directors after episode 4 (there's debate as to whether that was caused by issues with the direction of the show itself or by the first director's conduct in relations with other people involved with the production), and while it never really becomes "a show with a plot", the pacing and the timing of jokes improve somewhat afterwards. But yeah, the show is kind of a hard sell nowadays. I first watched it in 2010, when it still sort of worked as a primer on otaku culture, but by now its function has shifted to being more of a time capsule of mid-2000's otaku culture. If a show like that were made nowadays there'd be a lot more references to gacha mobile games, isekai and light novels with ridiculously long titles, but also much fewer references to visual novels and dating sims.
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crush
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Re: ABATT (All Basque All The Time) + MIA (Japanese)

Postby crush » Sun Mar 15, 2020 11:08 am

vonPeterhof wrote:FWIW Lucky Star changed directors after episode 4 (there's debate as to whether that was caused by issues with the direction of the show itself or by the first director's conduct in relations with other people involved with the production), and while it never really becomes "a show with a plot", the pacing and the timing of jokes improve somewhat afterwards. But yeah, the show is kind of a hard sell nowadays. I first watched it in 2010, when it still sort of worked as a primer on otaku culture, but by now its function has shifted to being more of a time capsule of mid-2000's otaku culture. If a show like that were made nowadays there'd be a lot more references to gacha mobile games, isekai and light novels with ridiculously long titles, but also much fewer references to visual novels and dating sims.

Perhaps that's part of the problem, that i'm not too familiar with that culture. I spoke with a friend who said they enjoyed it when they watched it (maybe 7 years ago, similar to you i suppose) but at the same time they said they didn't think they'd really be able to watch it now. I've made it through 6 episodes so far and none have really stuck out to me, there was one which i somewhat enjoyed but i can't recall which now. Another problem is probably my super low comprehension (20-30% probably).

There were also a few things in your post i didn't know like gacha games and isekai novels (though from the name i figured it was something to do with "different worlds"), so it's likely i wouldn't be able to follow along with a more modern version of the show either, heh. Anyway, thanks for providing some background on the show!
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golyplot
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Re: ABATT (All Basque All The Time) + MIA (Japanese)

Postby golyplot » Tue Mar 17, 2020 2:45 pm

For isekai, just think "inspired by Sword Art Online".
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crush
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Re: ABATT (All Basque All The Time) + MIA (Japanese)

Postby crush » Tue Mar 17, 2020 7:48 pm

Ah, i haven't watched/read that so it doesn't mean a whole lot to me, though it's on my list of things to watch. As it's something i thought i might really enjoy, i've been saving it for later on.
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crush
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Re: ABATT (All Basque All The Time) + MIA (Japanese)

Postby crush » Sat Mar 21, 2020 2:57 pm

Basque
Basque has been sort of put on hold for the moment as classes are stopped and i've been focusing more on getting immersion in in Japanese. I feel bad about it but it's just hard to find time to balance everything.

Japanese
1074: 700 mature, 374 young
It might not make much sense to keep posting the number of mature vs young cards anymore now that i'm further along and the majority of the deck is maturing.

I finished 四月は君の嘘 and am about halfway through 氷菓 (Hyouka), generally watching about 3 episodes a day or a little over an hour's worth. The sentences i've been mining from Morphman have been really great for this show, the audio is mostly very clear, the speakers are (mostly) clear -- though sometimes they speak a bit fast -- and there isn't a lot of background noise unlike the other shows i've watched. I'm still learning 20 new cards a day for the time being, but i've started adding another type of cards as well, which leads me to my next thing worthy of note:

I've started playing Fire Emblem Awakening (覚醒/かくせい) in Japanese. I've played it before in English and loved the storytelling style, it's like a movie with tons of audio, cut scenes, and very personable characters that i grew very fond of. But the major thing is that i can probably follow along with about 70% or so of the (written) dialog. I can only read about 30% of it as i'm not sure how the kanji should be read (they have way more readings than in Mandarin/Cantonese) but from context and just from recognizing kanji that are similar to Mandarin i can follow along with the story well enough to actually enjoy it, which is pretty amazing to me. I've started mining five sentences a day from it as preparation, generally trying to grab things that will be useful when playing other games (specifically RPGs), things like "kingdom", "battle", "axe/spear/arrow/sword", etc. It's been a big confidence booster. My comprehension of 氷菓 was really low in the first couple episodes, but they also have so much dialog that it's easy to get lost. I'm following along a bit better now, but 四月は君の嘘 was way easier to follow (possibly because of the simpler story line).
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crush
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Re: ABATT (All Basque All The Time) + MIA (Japanese)

Postby crush » Sat Mar 28, 2020 8:18 pm

Japanese
1210 cards
I've managed to keep up with the pace of 20 new cards a day. It's starting to build up in reviews, but i've got more free time than usual now so for the time being i'm going to see how long i can continue. I had 117 reviews today which is more than i'd like to have, perhaps if it gets up to 150 or so i'll lower it back down to 15 or 10. Just trying to take advantage of this extra time i have now.

I finished 氷菓 and have started watching しろくまカフェ (Shirokuma Cafe). I wasn't sure if i'd like it or not, but the characters have a certain charm and the speech is way slower than any of the other animes i've watched. This means that my comprehension for this show is way higher, i'd say closer to around 40% with occasional conversations/dialogs where i can understand everything. So even if it's not the most interesting show i feel like it's helping me reinforce a lot more vocabulary (as many of the characters speak slowly and i have more time to make out words/piece sentences together) and that alone has been worth it. I can't wait to reach the stage where there is real i+1 native content to watch instead of now where most of it is i+4/5. I've managed to keep my pace of three episodes a day up, as well.

I've also been getting about an hour or so a night in of Fire Emblem which is fun. I like seeing overlap between different media formats, e.g. seeing words i've learned from animes showing up in video games or vice versa.

Ah, i've also started watching Cure Dolly's "Japanese from Scratch" set of videos. I've watched up to lesson 24 so far. I believe i heard about it from golyplot's blog. At first i was turned off by the TTS and set it aside, but now i just focus on the subtitles and try to ignore the voice. It's a different way of explaining things and it's helped provide some extra context for things i've learned (and maybe forgotten) and cleared up a couple things which never really clicked. The videos also tend to be shorter (generally around 12 minutes so far) which i like. Some of the explanations feel a bit rushed (e.g. the transitive/intransative aka self-move/other-move video) or are a bit convoluted, but overall it's been helpful. I'm going to try to get through all the videos in the beginner lessons during the quarantine.

Edit: I updated the first post with some progress updates, i might use a similar formats for my weekly updates here on out, namely:
MIA progress
Stage 1 (audio cards)
Recognition RTK - 1000 Kanji: 1000 / 1000
Basic Grammar/Vocab - Tango N5 + Tae Kim: 1400 / 1400
Sentence Mining - 2000 Sentences: 1210 / 2000
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crush
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Re: ABATT (All Basque All The Time) + MIA (Japanese)

Postby crush » Sat Apr 04, 2020 5:18 pm

Japanese
1345 cards
Not much to mention this week other than i've been mostly consistent watching しろくまカフェ (Shirokuma Cafe) and playing Fire Emblem, as well as continuing with my cards. I've gotten a bit sidetracked from Cure Dolly, but i'll try to pick back up again as some of the videos are useful (though some are just confusing or don't clear much up for me). At this rate it should be about another month before i reach that 2000 sentence marker and start the dreaded "monolingual transition". I'm not sure if i'll be able to keep 20 new cards a day up the whole time, but while i have the free time i'll try to take advantage of it.

MIA progress

Stage 1 (audio cards)
Recognition RTK - 1000 Kanji: 1000 / 1000
Basic Grammar/Vocab - Tango N5 + Tae Kim: 1400 / 1400
Sentence Mining - 2000 Sentences: 1345 / 2000
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crush
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Re: ABATT (All Basque All The Time) + MIA (Japanese)

Postby crush » Sat Apr 11, 2020 1:59 pm

Japanese
1480 cards
Well last night i finished しろくまカフェ (Shirokuma Cafe) and must admit i'm sad to let it go. While it feels nice to have finished another anime, it was at a much closer level to my current level of Japanese, the characters spoke slowly and simply, and it made me feel like i'd made a ton of progress. For the next show i think i'm going to try a drama. A friend recommended Doctor X and i've found subtitles in English and Japanese for it (though the Japanese subtitles have required a bit of readjusting) so i'll be able to make a subs2srs deck for it.

Otherwise, i've been continuing with Fire Emblem and enjoying that. There is so much content as far as storyline and character development, i can't imagine how much the writers had to put together. I love reading about the characters, their dialogs, watching their relationships/friendships progress, this whole series is really great from a language learning perspective, at least. I've also started reading a manga: 四月は君の嘘 (Your Lie in April). I watched and enjoyed the anime, so this'll be my first shot at actually reading something from start to finish. I'm about 50 pages in so far and go back in forth as far as comprehension. It has furigana next to all the kanji which helps a lot, some pages i can follow along easily and others i don't understand much at all. But building reading skills is one of my major goals for Japanese (even more so than listening comprehension), so hopefully i can get enough reading in to make my sentence mining self-sustaining (i.e. keep the words and structures in my head long enough for them to get absorbed by my immersion).

I also read 寿命を買い取ってもらった。一年につき、一万円で。 (I sold my life for ten thousand yen per year) on bilingual manga and that was interesting, unfortunately they only have the first two chapters and i couldn't figure out how/where to buy a digital version of the full manga online. If anyone has suggestions (e.g. for a place that supports PayPal or something) please let me know! In any event, i'll continue with 四月は君の嘘 (Your Lie in April) for the time being.

MIA progress

Stage 1 (audio cards)
Recognition RTK - 1000 Kanji: 1000 / 1000
Basic Grammar/Vocab - Tango N5 + Tae Kim: 1400 / 1400
Sentence Mining - 2000 Sentences: 1480 / 2000
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golyplot
Black Belt - 1st Dan
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Re: ABATT (All Basque All The Time) + MIA (Japanese)

Postby golyplot » Sat Apr 11, 2020 2:16 pm

crush wrote:Ah, i've also started watching Cure Dolly's "Japanese from Scratch" set of videos. I've watched up to lesson 24 so far. I believe i heard about it from golyplot's blog.


If so, that's pretty ironic. I've only watched one video (the transitive/intransitive one) after seeing it recommended elsewhere. I am also put off by the whole TTS thing.
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ryanheise
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Re: ABATT (All Basque All The Time) + MIA (Japanese)

Postby ryanheise » Sat Apr 11, 2020 3:24 pm

crush wrote:Ah, i've also started watching Cure Dolly's "Japanese from Scratch" set of videos. ... At first i was turned off by the TTS and set it aside, but now i just focus on the subtitles and try to ignore the voice.


I clicked because I was curious to hear the quality of the TTS voice. By the way, it's definitely a real human voice (complete with saliva and breath noises) modulated by software. I found an interesting comment below one of the videos:

Drauc: "One suggestion or constructive criticism would be to lower the volume on sound effects because your voice is rather low"
Cure Dolly: "Thank you, and I am so happy to be able to help you. I seem to be distinctly audio-challenged. I try to balance the sound effects with the other audio (and usually lower their volume) but I'll try lowering them further."

Well that should settle it, but then she goes on to say: "Somehow things don't seem to sound to me quite how they sound to humans. So precise information such as yours is very helpful to me in adjusting things."
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