Learning Japanese from zero by listening: 2021 Log

[golyplot]

And the character is 歯 not 葉: 歯を磨く (though when i typed it just now the IME also suggested 葉 for some reason).

Oops sorry. That's what I meant, but the IME betrayed me. I guess I should be embarrassed that I didn't notice.

[golyplot]

Two months ago, I took a practice N5 exam. Despite devoting so much of my time to listening practice over the last year, I still failed miserably on the N5 listening section, doing no better than chance. Today, I retook the test to see if I could do better.

More specifically, I took sections 2-4 (Point Comprehension, Utterance Expressions, and Quick Response), since I already got a perfect score on section 1 (Task-based Comprehension) when I took it before. I definitely felt like I could understand the questions more clearly this time, but it was still a struggle to figure out the answers sometimes and my performance overall was disappointing, particularly at the end.

My scores were
Point Comprehension: 5/6
Utterance Expressions: 3/5
Quick Response: 2/6

I did well on section 2 (point comprehension), but barely better than chance on section 3 and no better than chance on section 4 (sections 3 and 4 have three choices per answer, so you would expect to get 2/6 on average just from random guessing). Interestingly, I put the same (wrong) answers for the last two questions of section 4 across all three times that I took the test.


In other news, the 洞穴 lesson on WK said that it could be pronounced as either douketsu or horaana, but the later is less formal. I wonder if this is related to the thing about Chinese words being considered prestigious and formal in Japanese like Latin is in English, and thus the onyomi reading is more formal than the kunyomi. Interestingly, Jisho only lists the later reading.

[golyplot]

Not much to talk about lately, but I discovered that DungMori is offering fully graded free online mock JLPT exams this weekend (11/27-11/29). I figured I should post about it so that anyone else following along can make use of them as well. The site is in Vietnamese, but luckily thanks to Google Translate, that didn't prove to be a problem.

Also, I watched ep7 of K-On! tonight. I was surprised to see that Yui has a kotatsu at home. I didn't realize that they were still in common use - I thought they were a historical thing, but per Wikipedia, apparently they're still common in Japan today. Also, I found the Christmas spread amusing - onigiri, sandwiches, turkey, and a "traditional" strawberry sponge cake. It's such an eclectic mixture of Japanese and Western fare. I can't imagine sandwiches ever being served next to roast turkey in the west, let alone onigiri and turkey. Also, they appear to have champagne as well, though that's probably more a matter of different drinking ages.

[vonPeterhof]

Also, I watched ep7 of K-On! tonight. I was surprised to see that Yui has a kotatsu at home. I didn't realize that they were still in common use - I thought they were a historical thing, but per Wikipedia, apparently they're still common in Japan today. Also, I found the Christmas spread amusing - onigiri, sandwiches, turkey, and a "traditional" strawberry sponge cake. It's such an eclectic mixture of Japanese and Western fare. I can't imagine sandwiches ever being served next to roast turkey in the west, let alone onigiri and turkey. Also, they appear to have champagne as well, though that's probably more a matter of different drinking ages.

Kotatsu are a staple of winter episodes of anime as a symbol of domestic cosiness and comfort, and they are still very much a thing, mostly because central heating isn't. As for the drinking age in Japan, it's actually 20, so beyond the age range typical for high school, and Japanese TV networks are generally extremely reluctant to show minors smoking or drinking (the most you'll get is accidental or placebo inebriation; there have also been cases of adaptations cutting out underage drinking scenes or ageing up characters so that they can smoke), so it's safe to assume that the bottles contain some sort of mock champagne soda.

[golyplot]

Erin's challenge lesson 22 featured a video of a disaster training museum, which I found interesting because a couple years ago, I saw a video by a Youtuber traveling in Japan who also visited a disaster training school. I wondered if they were they same place, but after double checking the videos, there didn't seem to be much resemblance (though admittedly they could have changed everything in the intervening 10-15 years). Oh well, it was still interesting. The skit dialog also caused me to look up and read about the -kke ending.

Also, I completed my fourth playthrough of the Learn Japanese with Noriko podcast, now up to 246 videos (well, the 247th was just posted an hour ago, after I already stopped listening to it). I decided to stop repeating Noriko and switch to 4989 American Life again, starting with the new episodes since I stopped following that back in September. It's harder to understand, but I figured it's best to mix things up a bit.

[seito]

Why does that remind me of Super Table Flipper?

[golyplot]

I haven't posted recently because I discovered that you can play Magic online at untap.in and so did almost nothing else for the last three days. Hopefully I can get it out of my system and return to studying Japanese now. But anyway, here are the updates from a couple days ago:

I discovered that the word "mass" is written ミサ rather than マス like you'd expect. WTF? It's hard enough already to read katakana when they at least resemble the borrowed word.

I finished going through the Erin's Challenge lessons. I don't think they were particularly helpful, but at worst it's a couple hours of listening practice, and it provides interesting insights into 2000s Japan.

I took DungMori's mock N5 JLPT test but was extremely disappointed. The test is badly written - among other things, a number of questions are missing the correct answer choices, making them impossible to answer. This became obvious in the listening section, where for some reason, all the answer choices were copied over from the Kanji and Vocab section and had nothing to do with the listening questions. What a huge disappointment.


Also, I finished catching up on 4989 American Life but decided not to stick with it since it's harder to understand. Instead, I decided to try out Learn Japanese From Smalltalk.

[vonPeterhof]

I discovered that the word "mass" is written ミサ rather than マス like you'd expect. WTF? It's hard enough already to read katakana when they at least resemble the borrowed word.

Not all katakana words entered Japanese via English. ミサ, like a lot of other Christian terminology, was borrowed from Latin (missa). The same applies to some medical terminology, so if you weren't familiar with it already might as well get all your laughs out early on at "virus" being ウイルス

[dampingwire]

Not all katakana words entered Japanese via English. ミサ, like a lot of other Christian terminology, was borrowed from Latin (missa). The same applies to some medical terminology, so if you weren't familiar with it already might as well get all your laughs out early on at "virus" being ウイルス

I suspect that by this stage コロナウイルス and コロナワクチン has been burned into every Japanese learner's retinas!

Also, to add to the confusion, マス does exist too (for mass media but seemingly not for the lump of physical material).

[golyplot]

Just realized I forgot to do a monthly update, so here it is, two days late.

Eleven month update

As usual, not much to talk about. My Japanese activities have pretty much been limited to doing Wanikani, ignoring listening to podcasts in the background and sometimes watching anime.

I'm on the home stretch of Wanikani now, going through two levels per week, so the review load has ramped up considerably. Over the last week, I've spent an average of nearly two hours a day just doing Wanikani reviews and lessons. Unfortunately, that doesn't leave time for much else, hence the lack of non-WK Japanese study.

Apart from that, I discovered that I could play Magic online on untap.in, so I got addicted to that again and spent most available freetime on Magic last week, to the point where it even interfered with Wanikani.

Wanikani
Level 55
Items Learned (Guru+): 477部首 1833漢字 5543単語

Anime

Shows watched:

Currently watching:
K-On! (12 eps)

Complete:
Cannon Busters (12 eps)
Cardcaptor Sakura (70 eps)
BNA: Brand New Animal (12 eps)
The Dragon Prince (27 eps)
Sword Art Online Alternative: Gun Gale Online (12 eps)
Hilda (10 eps)
Carmen Sandiego (19 eps)

On hold:
The Disastrous Life of Saiki K. (20 eps)

Abandoned:
Polar Bear Cafe (1 ep)
One Piece (4 eps)
Jojo's Bizarre Adventure (1 ep)