Tagalog + Swedish

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

Postby crush » Sat Apr 11, 2020 3:50 pm

ryanheise wrote: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."

I've read some similar comments, i just assumed it was part of the robot "act". Perhaps you're right though. I mostly make use of the subtitles anyway.
0 x

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

Postby crush » Sat Apr 18, 2020 9:07 am

Japanese
1618 cards
I finished the first season of Doctor X and started the second season. I don't think i'll be making subs2srs decks for the second season as it took too much time (30-40 minutes per episode) to adjust the subtitles. I'll probably try to look for another drama to watch after this and start doing subs2srs of that show in advance/preparation to see if that helps much. I've been picking up quite a few medical terms (外科, 癌, 出血, etc.) most of them i would understand in reading if they used the kanji (which they don't always do in the subtitles, especially for 癌/ガン), but not the spoken forms.

I've also finished my first manga volume: 四月は君の嘘 (Your Lie in April). It wasn't as interesting as 寿命を買い取ってもらった, but that's probably also because it was so hard to read. I set up Capture2Text and JGlossator to look up words while reading. At the moment, Fire Emblem is much more manageable. I'm also not so sure i'm a huge fan of the manga format, but i'll try to stick with it for a while to see if i can't get my written comprehension up.

I should be done with Stage 1 in about 3 weeks, and as quarantine hasn't changed it's likely i'll be able to keep this pace up. Once i reach Stage 2, i plan to drop my pace back down to 10 cards a day for a while, i'd like to get back to around 60-70 total reviews a day. Today i had 144 + 20 new cards and it's just too much to keep up with long-term.

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: 1618 / 2000
3 x

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

Postby crush » Sat Apr 25, 2020 9:57 am

Japanese
1747 cards
This week i finished reading the second volume of 四月は君の嘘 (Your Lie in April). I also finished the second season of Doctor X and took a break from it to watch an anime (政宗くんのリベンジ: Masamune-kun's Revenge) which i'd originally listened to as passive immersion from Animelon and seemed like the dialog was relatively straightforward. And yes, it was much easier to follow than the medical stuff from Doctor X. I'd been feeling in a bit of a slump with the slow progress (considering i'm "studying" four to five hours a day if you count immersion) and it helped lift my motivation up a bit to be back around the 30-40% comprehension range. Still, considering all the time i've put into it, it's the slowest progress i've made in any language (including Basque). I'm not sure if it's the method or the language, but i can say at least that immersion now is relatively painless. I'm still mostly lost as far as dialog goes but i can pick up enough words and the occasional sentence to make it interesting. In any case, i finished 政宗君のリベンジ and have started back up with the third season of Doctor X.

I've also decided that i'll start reading about pitch accent alongside Stage 2. I'm not sure how much effort i'll put into it, but i'd like to at least have a basic idea of how it works. So in two weeks (when i reach "Stage 2") i think i'll subscribe to Dogen's Japanese Phonetics Patreon and begin watching their videos. At the same time i'll be starting the monolingual transition, so there'll be quite a few big changes coming up soon!

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: 1747 / 2000
4 x

crush
Blue Belt
Posts: 514
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Re: ABATT (All Basque All The Time) + MIA (Japanese)

Postby crush » Sat May 02, 2020 11:56 am

Japanese
1884 cards
This week i finished the third volume of 四月は君の嘘 (Your Lie in April). I started the fourth volume but the past few days have had trouble getting my reviews done quickly enough so i haven't made much progress. I also finished the third season of Doctor X and am almost done watching うさぎドロップ (Usagi Drop). I really like this show, it's a shame that it's so short (only 11 episodes).

I'm a week away from finishing Stage 1, i'm not 100% sure how i'll proceed, i want to slow down card production and spend more time immersing, though it's still hard to really follow along with anything. I can often pick up the gist of something, but not enough for immersion to be effortless. I came across a site called japanese.io for reading texts which seems pretty decent for getting reading practice in, so i'm going to try to dedicate some time to that each day.

I'm still going through Fire Emblem, i get about an hour or so in a day. As there's lots of text/dialog between characters, it's a lot of reading practice. I found a site which has all the dialogs from each chapter of the game written down, so i've started reading through those. That's also a much nicer environment for making cards, easier than using the Google Translate app to OCR the text and copy/paste into Anki. But overall, i want to slow down card production and try to streamline the review process so i have more free time to do interesting things.

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: 1884 / 2000
6 x

crush
Blue Belt
Posts: 514
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Re: ABATT (All Basque All The Time) + MIA (Japanese)

Postby crush » Fri May 08, 2020 12:54 pm

(Just a quick update before my main update tomorrow: I've finally reached 2000 sentence cards, officially marking the end of Stage 1 and the beginning of Stage 2!)
2 x

crush
Blue Belt
Posts: 514
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Re: ABATT (All Basque All The Time) + MIA (Japanese)

Postby crush » Sat May 09, 2020 6:38 pm

Japanese
2000/2000 cards

Yesterday i officially finished Stage 1 of MIA! I had a couple leeches this week so it turned out that on Friday i had exactly 2000 cards, originally it should've been about 2004 or so. Now to talk a bit about my next plan of action:

Pitch Accent
I can hear pitch accent being used but i have no real clue as to how it works beyond individual words. I've subscribed to Dogen's Patreon and have started watching their videos. When i get deeper into the course i suppose i'll have a better idea as to how to go about tackling pitch accent. I'm less concerned with speaking Japanese, but tonal languages are interesting to me and i'd like to have a solid understanding of how pitch accent works in Japanese. I think in the long run being able to follow the patterns in speech will help with my comprehension, we'll see.

Monolingual Transition
This is a huge thing in Japanese language learning circles, i haven't seen it spoken about much at all outside of Japanese. Basically, the idea is to switch from using NL translations to using TL definitions of words. It's a bit infamous, i suppose because AJATT stressed its importance heavily from a very early stage. I think MIA has a more interesting gradual approach which i'm going to attempt. It's split into four "phases":

Phase 1:
Goal: 100 cards
- Take words you already know and look up their definitions.
- Look for i+1 sentences and add those to Anki.
- Add unknown words from definitions you can't understand to a list to learn later.
- Go through the list of words and create sentence cards for each using a search engine or example sentence database.
- Continue using bilingual definitions for your regular cards.

Phase 2:
Goal: Understand 75% of definitions
- Set i+1 cards aside from your immersion to make monolingual cards.
- If you understand the definition to the target word, add it directly.
- If there are new words in the definition, make bilingual cards (similar to Phase 1) for those words.
- If you're still unable to understand the definition, just make a bilingual card.
- If you can now understand the definition, suspend the original i+1 card for a few days so that you learn the new words first, then study the original i+1 card.
- Continue using bilingual dictionaries in your general immersion.

Phase 3:
Goal: Learn all cards with monolingual dictionaries
- Use the monolingual dictionary for all new cards.
- For new words in definitions, look those up in the monolingual dictionary (up to two levels).
- Experiment with using the monolingual dictionary in immersion as well (but not necessary).

Phase 4:
Goal: Use monolingual dictionary for 95% of all look-ups
- At the beginning, use monolingual dictionaries for look-ups when you have the energy.
- Gradually increase how much you use monolingual dictionaries outside of creating cards.

I've started the first phase, which is also the most straightforward. The idea is that dictionary definitions tend to use a base set of words that are often not common in daily life but used very frequently in definitions. Once you get familiar with this base vocabulary, it opens the doors to monolingual definitions, which give you a more accurate idea as to what a word means and gives you a better idea what contexts it's used in. I feel like Stage 2 is where the real work starts to kick in.

Other Stuff
I'm also going to be putting more effort into reading. Previously, most of my reading was from video games and the occasional manga (though i haven't touched those in a couple weeks). I've started reading the first Harry Potter ebook (ハリー・ポッターと賢者の石) which i picked up from Pottermore. I've been going through it slowly, i'm about 2/3rds of the way through the first chapter (after about 4 days of reading). It's tough, but i wasn't sure what books i could read that were fast-paced and whose stories i was familiar with, so... I haven't really read English books the past ten years or so and somehow i don't think there are as many Japanese translations of the Spanish and Catalan books i generally read. If anyone has any suggestions for relatively simple books/light novels that have a quick pace, i'm all ears!

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: 2000 / 2000

Stage 2 (reading cards)
Monolingual Transition: ☐
Monolingual Transition - Phase 1: 10 / 100
Monolingual Transition - Phase 2 ☐
Monolingual Transition - Phase 3 ☐
Monolingual Transition - Phase 4 ☐
Sentence Mining - 3000 Sentences: 224 / 3000
5 x

crush
Blue Belt
Posts: 514
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Languages: EN (N), ES, ZH
Maintain: EUS, YUE, JP, HAW
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Re: ABATT (All Basque All The Time) + MIA (Japanese)

Postby crush » Sat May 16, 2020 12:58 pm

Japanese
This week i started Stage 2. I've also started reading a bit more, i'm about halfway through the second chapter of Harry Potter, generally trying to read 30-60 minutes a day (it usually ends up closer to 30).

I did ten cards a day for Phase 1 of the monolingual transition, but i'm going to drop that down to five a day from here on out as i feel like i still have more cards than i'd like to have each day.

I've also stopped relying on Morphman for grabbing new cards. Originally i was planning on using text cards from Stage 2 onwards but i'm going to try a mix of both text and audio cards. To grab the audio cards, i've set up ShareX to record audio and take screenshots (less important, in my opinion) and have started using Fluentcards to make cards from an anime with accompanying Japanese subs. I do this separately from my regular immersion as it's far less fluid of a process. It's hard to tell what sentences are i+1 without reading the subtitles, for example, as words i've seen before aren't always immediately recognizable in speech and in general coming across a new word kinda throws my rhythm off for the entire sentence. That's less of an issue as i progress in a language, but currently where very few sentences are 100% understandable when spoken at native speed, i have to use the subtitles to help me pick new cards.

MIA progress

Stage 2 (reading cards)
Monolingual Transition: ☐
Monolingual Transition - Phase 1 of 4: 80 / 100
Sentence Mining - 3000 Sentences: 238 / 3000
2 x

crush
Blue Belt
Posts: 514
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Re: ABATT (All Basque All The Time) + MIA (Japanese)

Postby crush » Sat May 23, 2020 1:14 pm

Japanese
I finished the first phase of the monolingual transition, now it's time to start phase 2 which has less tangible goals.

I also finished chapter 3 of Harry Potter and have been slowly moving forward with the pitch accent videos. I feel like a lot of the information isn't really sticking, though i am trying to pay attention to pitch accent while immersing and can generally get a feel for what i hear. But with my comprehension still so low it's tough.

I've been adding five cards a day (plus five cards for the monolingual transition) and plan to keep this pace up until my overall reviews drop a bit more, perhaps another couple weeks. I've finished a couple anime series over the past week or two as well, i'm currently watching となりの怪物くん (My Little Monster) and playing 時のオカリナ (the Ocarina of Time). 時のオカリナ has furigana over all the text which is nice as i can pick up some more words in context (and separate common words like あく/ひらく that are written the same: 開く).

MIA progress

Stage 2 (reading cards)
Monolingual Transition: ☐
Monolingual Transition - Phase 2 of 4: ☐
Sentence Mining - 3000 Sentences: 273 / 3000
3 x

crush
Blue Belt
Posts: 514
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Re: ABATT (All Basque All The Time) + MIA (Japanese)

Postby crush » Sun May 31, 2020 7:28 am

Looks like i forgot to do my weekly update yesterday. Whoops. But there's less to report now that i have less tangible milestones to reach for.

Basque
Euskara berriro ikasten hari naiz! I've picked my studies of Basque back up!

A classmate had lent me a book (Ahazten diren gauzak: Things that get forgotten) a couple weeks before quarantine. I finally finished it last night. It's a collection of short stories around typically Basque topics, things like the struggle for Basque independence, the stress put on a family when one of its members gets sent to a prison far from home (a common practice in the Spanish state for political prisoners, and Basque political prisoners in particular), immigration, homelessness, etc. A lot of the stories were based out of Donostia ("San Sebastián" in Spanish) though the author seemed to use a few words that are more common in the Bizkaiera dialect, so i'm not sure where they're from.

Anyway, the book, while about topics that i find genuinely interesting, was hard for me to read. Not so much because of the level (there were generally only a couple new words on each page, though some passages like one talking about Homer's Odyssey had more) but because the writing just never grabbed me. I set it aside for basically the entirety of quarantine and forced myself to finish it because Basque classes are starting back up next week (aka tomorrow) and i felt a bit embarrassed having borrowed the book for over three months and still not having finished it!

Anyway, i've been pulling some vocab from the book and just reading for about an hour each night.

Japanese
I finished となりの怪物くん and another anime called ブレンド S (Blend S) and started the fourth season of Doctor X. My Little Monster was pretty interesting with nice characters. Blend S was relatively easy to understand but was a bit weird. There's a 26 year old person who owns a restaurant and falls in love with a 16 year old girl that he hires in his restaurant. I dunno. I guess i don't really find that style of anime very interesting. It was short though so i pushed through it.

I've been adding five cards a day from the monolingual transition and five normal cards from my immersion, so that is progressing slowly but steadily. My review counts are slowly going down, at least!

Also, not much reading got done this week due to the addition of Basque back into my study routine. I'm about halfway through chapter 4 of Harry Potter. My nighttime slot to play 時のオカリナ also got filled by Basque reading, so i might work out some system of reading one night in Basque and playing a game another in Japanese. We'll see.

MIA progress

Stage 2 (reading cards)
Monolingual Transition: ☐
Monolingual Transition - Phase 2 of 4: ☐
Sentence Mining - 3000 Sentences: 308 / 3000
4 x

Dagane
Orange Belt
Posts: 172
Joined: Wed Apr 13, 2016 6:08 pm
Location: London, UK
Languages: I regularly use:
Spanish (N)
English (C2)
German (C1+)
Hungarian (A2?)

I formerly studied:
Galician (B2?)
Dutch (A1)
Czech (A0)
Portuguese (A2?)
French (A1?)
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Re: ABATT (All Basque All The Time) + MIA (Japanese)

Postby Dagane » Sun May 31, 2020 8:57 am

the stress put on a family when one of its members gets sent to a prison far from home (a common practice in the Spanish state for political prisoners, and Basque political prisoners in particular)


Incorrect. As far as I know, it was a common practice with convicts of terrorism (not just "political" prisoners. Such a thing would be illegal) and the reason behind it was the avoidance of demonstrations that support terrorist acts outside the prison gates. It made sense because the professionals working in Basque prisons would otherwise risk being menaced. Whether it is still a relevant policy nowadays, I am not sure. Maybe not.

It is amazing that you are learning Basque. I once toyed with the idea of learning it myself, and I may well do it one day. Back in the day it was kind of associated with negative things outside the Basque Country, but it really shouldn't. It is just a language and one we all Spaniards and even Europeans should be proud of because of its ancient roots and resilience. It is just a shame that political events can mar or influence our perception of languages. There have also been lots of hard-working and influential Basque people through history, and I'd love to access their literature and cinema in the original.
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