Tagalog + Swedish

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

Postby crush » Sat Aug 15, 2020 8:56 am

Japanese
This week was mostly spent on Japanese. I didn't get much reading done in Spanish as i was having trouble organizing my time a bit in the evenings and found i just kept running out of time.

I'm in the middle of chapter 5 of the second Harry Potter book (the flying car just hit the Whomping Willow). The past couple chapters have felt much longer, though. The first two chapters i was able to finish in one sitting, that definitely felt nice.

I watched two movies this week to get some variation in outside of the anime i've been watching: カメラを止めるな! (One Cut of the Dead) and 初恋 (First Love). カメラを止めるな! was a bit weird and slow/boring for probably the first 3/4 of the movie. 初恋 had plenty of action and was fun to watch even when i was understanding so little. It seems that anime episodes are a lot more filled with dialog than movies, though. I suppose this is because it's easier to add dialog than to animate things, whereas in a movie you can just pan the camera around without any dialog.

Other than that, just did some sentence mining to replenish my new card count and did my reviews every morning. I just checked and i've added 772 cards to my Audio/DJT cards deck. There's still so much i don't know, though, so at times it seems i need to measure my progress by half-years rather than days or weeks or even months. Progress is slow, but it's definitely there, just gotta search really hard to notice it.

Ah, and one last thing, i signed up for the free trial at Bunpro to try buckling down on my grammar since i haven't really put much formal study time into grammar. Pretty much all of the items from N4/5 were things i'd learned, probably 1/3 of N3 was new. I added the new items from N3/4/5 and finished those, now i'm working my way through the N2 grammar points. Currently at 82/210, but of those remaining 128 there are probably a good quarter at least that i know or that are obvious enough for me to just rely on immersion to pick up.

This week i'll be participating in the Godot Wild Jam 24 (a little contest of sorts making a game in a short time based off of a common theme), so i probably won't spend as much time on my languages this week.
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crush
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Re: ABATT (All Basque All The Time) + MIA (Japanese)

Postby crush » Tue Aug 25, 2020 11:04 am

So... we got close but didn't quite finish our game in time. I think we were probably about another day away from having a full game. Oh well!

I didn't get much study or reading in this week. I finished chapter 6 of Harry Potter and kept up with my reviews. I didn't add new cards when my mined cards ran out but i started back up yesterday. Also, my subscription to Satori Reader ended. It's easy to mine cards from there but at a rate of about one article a day i'm not sure if it's worth it. It seems i get around 4-5 new words per article, and at ten new cards a day i was doing 5 cards from 風が強く吹いている (Run With the Wind) and 5 from the Satori Reader articles. Some of the stories are pretty interesting, some fall a bit flat. I haven't done any of the really long series, let me see which ones i've read and mined:
1. The Zama 9 Murders (pretty interesting)
2. The Neighbor (interesting start, but didn't really enjoy the ending)
3. The River Sanzu (got about halfway through and stopped, didn't do much for me)
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crush
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Re: ABATT (All Basque All The Time) + MIA (Japanese)

Postby crush » Sat Aug 29, 2020 9:59 am

Japanese
I've slowly started getting back into my routine, yesterday was probably the first day i got my full routine in. The past few days (since my update on Tuesday) i mostly just read and did Anki reviews. I didn't add many new words this week either as i was busy (catching up) with work after slacking off a bit last week. I finished chapter 7 and am about half of the way through chapter 8. Last night my Firefox for Android updated which broke compatibility for Yomichan so i spent the morning re-installing the previous version of Firefox and setting Yomichan up again. I also turned off auto-updates for the time being (until full add-on support is added back in, at least).

Not sure if i mentioned it or not, but the week before last (i think?) i finished season one of 進撃の巨人 (Attack on Titan). I'm taking a break from that to watch 池袋ウエストゲートパーク (Ikebukuro West Gate Park) which i've been enjoying quite a bit. I assumed it was a show of the 90s as it has a very heavy 90s feel, it feels like something i would've loved watching as a teenager. It was apparently released in 2000 so not that far off, but the topics covered, the music, the characters, i've been enjoying pretty much everything about the show so far. It's a bit sad that so much of the content is flying over my head, i may have to rewatch this (along with Death Note) a year or two from now when it's more comprehensible.

Today i'm going to try to mine a couple episodes of 風が強く吹いている as next week i'll be pretty busy as i'm moving back to the states next Saturday, and once i set foot in the states it basically means i'll be stuck there for some time :(

Basque vs. Cantonese
I've been tossing it around in my head for a long time now. I love Basque and want to reach a really high level in it, but i'm not sure if i should put it off for the time being to focus on Cantonese as Cantonese is far more useful to me in my daily life. My partner and their family are all native Cantonese speakers (my partner's mom doesn't speak Mandarin) and i've wanted to improve my Cantonese for so long, i just don't have the time to study 3 languages intensively. I wish i could just focus on one, but limiting myself to two is already hard enough. I've been considering pushing Basque into maintenance mode when i get back to the states and jumping back into Cantonese.

I like Cantonese a lot, it's fun to speak, there are more interesting sounds, lots more slang, a million curse words (it seems the ratio of bad words to normal words is about 1:1), and all in all it just feels like it's more of a living language than Mandarin. But that could also be because i have a predisposition towards marginalized languages.
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crush
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Re: ABATT (All Basque All The Time) + MIA (Japanese)

Postby crush » Sun Sep 06, 2020 6:26 pm

Japanese
Just got back to the US. I did a lot of reading in the airport and on the plane. I finished reading through chapter 12 and started chapter 13 so am probably about 2/3rds of the way through now. On the plane i watched a Japanese movie called 君の膵臓をたべたい (I want to eat your Pancreas) which wasn't bad, kinda just a standard movie without much special. Later i watched Big Hero 6's Japanese dub which i was surprised to see. I enjoyed that mostly because my comprehension was so high, i'd say for a majority of the movie i could understand about 70% of the dialog and was able to follow along with pretty much every conversation. It made me wonder if i haven't got this all wrong and should instead be watching Japanese dubs of animated shows i've seen instead of anime. Understanding most of what is going on is probably more helpful, not to mention it's a lot more enjoyable. So i'm considering rethinking my watching habits.

Things are still up in the air and i don't have my habits back in place so i'm not sure how work + study + quarantine + seeing family is going to affect everything. Not to mention being separated from my partner for the time being. I also need to start hitting the Cantonese books hard.
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crush
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Re: ABATT (All Basque All The Time) + MIA (Japanese)

Postby crush » Sun Sep 13, 2020 4:54 am

Japanese
I've been keeping up with Anki and started adding some new vocab/sentences as well.

I've been watching dubbed western animated movies and have found my comprehension way higher, for some movies i'd say it's as high as 70-80%. I haven't found much time for reading, probably only 10-15 minutes a day.

Cantonese
I've been testing out Olle Kjellin's method for improving pronunciation. Not sure how well it works. I pulled 30 sentences from the videos here. The speed of speech is pretty fast, i think using the Glossika sentences would've been better as they are slower and give me more time to focus on enunciating well, but my partner has said that person's Cantonese sounds a bit odd. I've gone through four sentences so far 15 minutes each, reviewing the previous four days' sentences for five minutes each.

I've also been going through Glossika again (using my Natibo app). It's a review as i've studied it all before, but i want to refresh and also focus more on pronunciation, which is definitely my weak point. I'm doing 20 new sentences a day so it should take about 5 months to get through it.

I also bought Olly Richards' Cantonese Conversations. I took it a step further and split all the sentences up and put those into my Natibo app as well (recording the English prompts myself) and have been studying that way. I've just started going through the second conversation after spending maybe 3 or 4 days with the first one and understanding it probably 95-100% and am impressed already by how much easier it is to follow along.

I have some other resources as well, my partner bought me a book of Cantonese idioms and popular phrases which i'd like to get to later when speaking and listening is much easier. I also have the Lonely Planet Cantonese phrasebook which has tons of great phrases. I've been considering asking my partner to record them or hiring someone to do so so i can put those into Natibo as well, perhaps to continue after i finish either the conversations or Glossika, whichever comes first. I also have a couple books in Mandarin, one's pretty simple but has vocabulary i can mine (and audio), the other's more comprehensive and again may be good for after i get through Glossika and the conversations. For now i've got enough going on, so i'm trying to hold back from adding new things to do.

I've also been trying to watch a bit of Cantonese every day but it can be hard to find stuff to watch. I've been trying to find Cantonese dubs of movies but haven't had much luck. I know they exist as i've watched them before, i may end up just having to watch some Canto dramas instead. Tonight i finished watching the Cantonese dub of Spies in Disguise.
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crush
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Re: ABATT (All Basque All The Time) + MIA (Japanese)

Postby crush » Sat Sep 19, 2020 10:25 pm

Japanese
This week i mostly kept up with my reviews. Got a little reading done but not much. I'm still on that same chapter (15 i think) which must be like 500 pages long. I've been reading it for at least a week now. I also continued watching dubbed animated films that i'd originally seen in English (or Spanish) and have been enjoying the boost in comprehension. I'm only getting about 30-45 minutes a day in though.

Cantonese
I've been doing a similar thing for Cantonese, my partner's been sending me movies dubbed in Cantonese. I just finished the first Kung Fu Panda last night. It's weird, Cantonese feels easier and speaking it is way easier than Japanese, but Japanese still feels more familiar. I know if i'd put the same effort as i've put into Japanese this past year my Cantonese (despite the lack of resources and especially reading material) my Cantonese level would far surpass my current Japanese level.

My Cantonese has a very small foundation of stuff i feel comfortable with, things i talk about all the time, and is littered with (often failed) attempts at trying to convert a Mandarin thought into Cantonese. It's funny though because after all this time my Mandarin is starting to pick up Cantonese influences as well. Mandarin is the language my partner and i generally communicate in (though we kind of dive in and out of Basque, Spanish, English, and of course Cantonese, it pretty much always comes back to Mandarin) and she speaks a somewhat Cantonese-influenced Mandarin. For example, she often says things like 那我走先了 or 我没试过一个人去开车 (试过 meaning "to have the experience of").

Anyway, i continued with the Cantonese Conversations and Olle Kjellin's method. I'm thinking the recordings i found are a bit too fast for me, but it's so hard to find recordings without a ton of background music/noise. I'm not sure if anyone else has tried Olle's method, i'm all ears if anyone has any suggestions. I've gone through 8 sentences so far, spending 15 minutes on each and reviewing the previous 4 days for a total of about 25 minutes a day. I'm still going through Glossika (using Natibo) at a rate of 20 sentences per day and trying to focus more on pronunciation as all the sentences are easy for me (i've studied them before and they form the base of my Cantonese). I also downloaded a shared Anki deck with 20k words in it. Not sure if i'll keep with it but i figure it can't hurt. Eventually i'd like to make some Cantonese-learning resources with my partner.
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crush
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Re: ABATT (All Basque All The Time) + MIA (Japanese)

Postby crush » Sun Sep 27, 2020 10:50 pm

Japanese
I've been continuing with Anki. I watched a couple Japanese dubs of animated movies this week as well, a big boost to my confidence as i can actually follow along (being familiar with most of the stories definitely helps). I'm also sentence mining from 一週間フレンズ, i'm on the last episode. I've enjoyed the story and also appreciate that it's relatively short (12 episodes).

Cantonese
Kinda stopped with the Olle Kjellin stuff, didn't feel like it was really doing too much, largely because many of the sentences were just too fast and i didn't feel like i was able to articulate well. I may go back to it again at some point later on when i can maybe find someone to clearly record some sentences for me.

I've started going through the fourth conversation in the Cantonese Conversations. I also want to start talking with a tutor 2-3 times a week, but i'll have to wait until i can find work as my partner and i are in the process of getting a fiancee visa so we can get married in the US and after lawyer/application fees there's not much left.

I've also continued with the Glossika sentences, doing 20 a day. I'm up to 480 sentences now. And doing the Anki reviews for that Cantonese deck. There are a ton of relatively useless words in there (which is to be expected, it's got 22k words). I was hoping it'd be somewhat organized by frequency but it seems pretty random. The audio is also TTS and has some wrong pronunciations. I have the Lonely Planet Cantonese book which would be nice, but i'm a bit pressed for time and haven't set aside time to start adding cards to a deck. I should switch to that as it's a lot more practical vocabulary, just... time.

Ah and i've continued watching Cantonese dubs of cartoons. Kinda sad to see that the Japanese versions are easier to understand considering i regularly use Cantonese and have never actually spoken Japanese, but hopefully the conversations + immersion will help. And as i mentioned earlier, i'd like to find a tutor (or two) to perhaps add some useful sentences for when my Glossika ones are done or for Anki or something.
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crush
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Re: ABATT (All Basque All The Time) + MIA (Japanese)

Postby crush » Sun Oct 04, 2020 4:18 pm

jJapanese
Not much to mention here, i finished (sentence mining) 一週間フレンズ, i was happy the way the story turned in the last couple episodes. To not share any spoilers or anything, i'll just say i thought it was pretty nice to watch and easy to understand. I started watching 銀の匙 (Silver Spoon i think in English) which i've heard may interest me (as a vegan). The subtitles on kitsunekko are off in several places so i think i may look for something else to mine from.

Still slowly going through Harry Potter, i finished another chapter this past week, i think there's three left? I also played ファイアーエムブレム a bit yesterday and will probably play some more today after finishing my Cantonese Glossika reps. I've been playing the 暗夜王国 version of Fire Emblem Fates. I played the 白夜王国 story in English a couple years back. I love these Fire Emblem games for practicing Japanese. It helps that i've played them in English but more than that that you can't really get lost, you can just pick up and play and the story always moves forward.

Cantonese
I'm still watching probably 30 minutes of a Cantonese movie each night, talking to my partner in Cantonese in the mornings (and helping her practice Spanish in the evenings), doing Glossika, studying/reviewing the Cantonese Conversations, and also watching the videos on Cantonese with Brittany which are mostly very simple but have a literal Cantonese transcription + Jyutping which is super helpful. Other than that, not much. I'm still doing 25 new words in Anki and started pulling words from my Lonely Planet phrasebook, though my partner recently told me that a lot of the words feel very Mandarin. It's hard to find a decent way to efficiently learn vocabulary. It seems that Cantonese speakers in general are very critical of Cantonese learning resources. My Cantonese isn't good enough to really comment, but every single course i've tried and asked native speakers about, i always get one (or more) of the following responses:
1. It doesn't natural.
2. It sounds Mandarin-y.
3. The speaker sounds weird.

That last one in particular seems odd to me considering the vast range of accents in Cantonese. One day i'll learn Cantonese well... :cry:
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Flickserve
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Re: Cantonese + MIA (Japanese)

Postby Flickserve » Mon Oct 05, 2020 9:08 am

To be honest, my impression of glossika Cantonese is good. I am a second language learner of Cantonese. I have the old glossika MP3 and PDFs.

I would like to ask how you created the Anki cards for cantonese. Did you make them yourself?

It's not exactly native speed and doesn't drop the sounds but I think it's pretty good as a source for a learner to follow good pronunciation. Then after that, move on to learning how present day spoken Cantonese differs slightly especially when you mention how fast they speak. Certainly, I don't think there is any harm with the glossika Cantonese as a learning source.
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crush
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Re: Cantonese + MIA (Japanese)

Postby crush » Mon Oct 05, 2020 8:56 pm

Flickserve wrote:To be honest, my impression of glossika Cantonese is good. I am a second language learner of Cantonese. I have the old glossika MP3 and PDFs.

That has been my experience as well, however my partner (a native speaker) has complained that the speakers accent sounds weird. I've seen a few people mention this as well, so i'm not sure if Cantonese is maybe a heritage language for the author of the course living in Taiwan? Years ago (around the time the PDF/mp3 course came out) I read some other comments by Hong Kongers also saying the same thing. But it could just be that native speakers aren't used to "classroom" speech. However, my experience with the course has been very positive, despite my partner commenting on odd pronunciation patterns i've picked up (the way she says 惊 is different from the speaker in the course, for example). This is my second time going through the full course as the first time was a couple years ago and i felt like i could use a refresher. I've been trying to convince her to record some conversations and other sentences for me to use as study material and i think she may begin doing so in the coming weeks.

As for the Anki cards, i'm just using this deck. It's not the greatest and again my partner complains about how useless some of the words are, but i just checked and i'm at 440 words so far. I've seen a surprising number of these words in the Cantonese Conversations (in my opinion, Canto Convos + Glossika are an excellent intermediate set of resources and complement each other well) and in the animated movies i've been watching. The biggest help for me has been getting a better grasp of sound changes from Mandarin to Cantonese as well as learning to recognize traditional forms of simplified characters (albeit that's less useful for Cantonese as it's rarely written outside of WhatsApp/Wechat/online forums).

If you're learning Cantonese, i'd be more than happy to pool resources and share things i've made/am working on. I can have conversations with people, but listening to other people speak amongst themselves (and movies) are just another beast altogether. I've had to be a lot more creative with Cantonese as it's my first time learning a language without literature. My long-term goal is to help preserve Cantonese and make more high quality resources available...
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