Japanese and Chill

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kraemder
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Re: Japanese and Chill: Devilyoudont's 2020 Log (Wanderlusting EO, ES, and KO)

Postby kraemder » Sat May 09, 2020 5:36 am

Good luck with the kanji. If you keep reading you’ll be surprised how much better you’ll get at remembering kanji without trying too hard. But it does take a lot of time.
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devilyoudont
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Re: Japanese and Chill: Devilyoudont's 2020 Log (Wanderlusting EO, ES, and KO)

Postby devilyoudont » Sun May 10, 2020 1:52 pm

Japanese
Lingq detects I know 3527 words.

Turns out I hadn't finished chapter 2 of 三姉妹探偵団--it's just that Lingq broke chapter 2 into two lessons. So I finished chapter 2 and read about 90% of Chapter 3 (unless chapter 3 is split into 3 lessons). This book is still moving at a really good pace, which I really enjoy. I do feel bad for the eldest sister Ayako tho, who appears to just be a normal person surrounded by hypercapable people lol.

I was already reading enough to generate 50 Lingqs per day, so I went ahead and set that as my daily goal--previously I had it set to the minimum possible setting.

I finished testing myself on the joyo kanji, and identified 1408 which I either don't know, or need to review more. The last three hundred-ish (in other words, those characters with the highest number of strokes more or less), were practically completely unknown to me. Of the remaining 1100, I would guess that probably 1 in 10 characters were characters which I knew but made a small error with... such as adding a dot to 専 (like 博), or writing out kanji like 場 or 湯 with 易 on the right, or writing the radicals out of order 含 as 吟. I'm highly confident that I know these characters well enough for any situation outside of a testing environment, but I decided to load them into anki anyway, because maybe one day I will want to take a test.

Right now I have anki set to show me 5 a day. Right now, this feels too easy, but I know it's because I am remembering kanji unnaturally well because I just tested myself on all of them. I will possibly want to reevaluate this number after about a month, and either add a few more or take it even lower. The main thing here is that I don't want to fall behind on reviews at all, and I also don't want to be spending more than like maybe 30 minutes a day on reviews. Even if I'm only learning 1 character a day, it doesn't matter so long as I don't quit.

Esperanto
Lingq detects that I know 3337 words.

Another chapter where nothing happens in Ĉu vi kuiras ĉine? This wasn't so insufferable tho, because it was more or less about developing the detective character Jano Karal's thought process and his relationship with his wife.

Helped komencantojn with questions, but otherwise did not use Esperanto much this week.

Spanish
Lingq detects I know 792 words.

I'm trying to hit a daily goal in Spanish right now... I have it set to the lowest possible amount (13 new lingqs a day). I know so few words in Spanish right now that such a low goal more or less means no measurable progress in terms of advancing the story in Esperanza renace. However, just getting thru this amount is kind of tiring for me. I'm already becoming familiar with some words I didn't know before tho: colina, cosecha

Korean
Did a lesson on lingodeer, learning about negation. One downside of lingodeer is that I'm aware that it's teaching me some form which would correspond to ます in Japanese. On the one hand, if I end up sticking with Korean, I will need to learn it all eventually anyway, so it doesn't super matter what order I learn it in. On the other hand, I like learning dictionary form because I need to use dictionaries... on yet another hand, I think I have read that dictionary form is not actually the most frequently used form in Korean... Man I can feel it that Korean verbs are probably gonna mess me up :lol:
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devilyoudont
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Re: Japanese and Chill: Devilyoudont's 2020 Log (Wanderlusting EO, ES, and KO)

Postby devilyoudont » Sun May 17, 2020 7:44 pm

Tandem now seems to allow language exchange on their website. Huge news for me whenever I get back into language exchanges because it's really hard for me to type accurately in English on a cell phone, let alone in other languages. I also found an app which looks interesting called Lingbe... it's centered around phone calls, and more or less the app pairs you with 1 person for you to help using your native language then a different person who will help you with your target language. Too afraid to use it right now tho.

I switched from Microsoft IME to Google IME and I'm finding it a lot more accurate so far. It also does not constantly break my Esperanto Keyboard, so switching between English, Japanese and Esperanto is less of a problem.

Japanese
Lingq detects I know 3767 words.

Still mainly just using Lingq to read and listen. I spent a little bit of time thinking about why Lingq has been more effective for me than addons like rikaikun. I think it's because Lingq does not automatically show a definition. When I don't know a word, I really think about it for a moment trying to figure it out from context/kanji. Only then do I click on a word and see if my guess was right. The color coding allows me to see "this is a word I've seen before, and I've made progress on it since my original encounter with it." This makes the guessing seem less futile in other systems, where I sometimes develop a feeling that "I always get this word wrong." In Lingq, I can clearly see that I am sometimes getting it right.

Completed chapter 4 of 三姉妹探偵団. I am wondering if they will be introducing a romance element to the story. Kunitomo after all saved Yuriko from an oncoming train. There are certain things I don't like about Japanese stories, and one of them is relationships with huge age gaps. This isn't a deal breaker for me, and I won't quit reading the book over it, but it would annoy me.

Continued with anki flashcards for kanji. Added a bar to my signature to track my progress with this.

Found a really good resource list: https://japanese.meta.stackexchange.com ... g-japanese

Esperanto
Lingq detects I know 3777 words. I have kind of wondered about when Lingq would detect more words for Esperanto than for Japanese. In some way, I expected that it should have happened already because I am so much further along in a book for adults in Esperanto, than what I have read in Japanese. On the other hand, Esperanto uses a lot fewer words than most languages do. So I'm mainly collecting inflections (domo vs domon vs domoj vs domojn) and compound words. So I expect at some level of Japanese, it will switch back, because Japanese just has so many more words than Esperanto. It will be interesting to see when that happens (if I am still using lingq).

Completed chapter 10 of Ĉu vi kuiras ĉine? Finally we are getting to chinese food. In some sense this chapter did a lot to humanize the murder victim for me. I am not sure if that was the author's intent or not, but that was what happened. Another suspect was also introduced, and I'm really hoping it's not this guy. This character is gay in that kind of camp way that hollywood villains often were. So if it turns out that he is the villain, it would feel slightly homophobic to me (maybe more or less homophobic depending on how well it is handled). Maybe it could be handled in such a way where it would not be homophobic, but given the age of this book... I am not completely optimistic.

Also did some chatrooms in Esperanto.

Spanish
Lingq detects I know 951 words.

It's been clear for like a week to me that Esperanza's father must die pretty soon here, but I make so little progress each day that I still haven't gotten to, what I assume, is the event which will change Esperanza's perfect life and create conflicts and struggles which she must over come.

It's interesting to me how many words in Spanish I know simply due to cognates between English and Spanish. I always check the definition the first time I see a word tho, just to make sure they are not "false friends."

I got addicted to a youtube channel this week called Joss and Janik... Notable for language learning only because Joss is a native speaker of Spanish. So I watched quite a lot of their Spanish-related videos along with videos about everything else. I was surprised by how much of Joss's Spanish I was able to understand without subtitles. However, Mexican Spanish has always been more familiar to me in a way... I'm sure if I were to try to really listen to the Spanish around me (puerto rican spanish) I would feel just as lost as always.

Started watching Pan's Labyrinth but quit part way thru because it is a hyper violent film, and I hate watching movies where children or animals die. Your definition of violence may vary, but I have an anxiety disorder and this is above my tolerance.

Something that felt kind of interesting about watching Spanish content subtitled in English was feeling my brain pick out spanish words after the fact. So often I couldn't understand what the male characters were saying in Pan's Labyrinth (understanding male speech... eternal problem across all languages?!), but I would see the English subtitle and I would realize "oh yes, he did say that word." Very strange feeling.

Laddering

Started watching a youtube channel called Yuyu Nihongo. This is for Spanish speakers learning Japanese, but because I know basic Japanese grammar points fairly well, it makes it pretty easy for me to understand what is being said in Spanish.
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ryanheise
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Re: Japanese and Chill: Devilyoudont's 2020 Log (Wanderlusting EO, ES, and KO)

Postby ryanheise » Thu May 21, 2020 4:35 pm

Thanks for recommending Lingbe. It sounded interesting, so I just tried it out and had sort of an interesting experience.

First of all, there was an Android bug on signing up if you choose not to use the Facebook sign up button. I used the email sign up, and clicking the sign up button just sat there forever without any sign that anything was happening, although apparently it worked because I received an email to confirm my sign up email address, which I did. I went back to the app and tried to log in with that email, but the app was unresponsive again. I then backed out of the app and re-launched the app, and from that point it just crashed every time. If you also use Android and want to avoid the Facebook sign in option, the way I eventually got into the app was to clear the app's storage from the Android settings, and re-launch the app. Then I could login using the account I created before the crash.

After signing in, I almost immediately got an invitation to practice my native language English with someone, and this guy did a really suspiciously convincing job of telling me how good the app was and that I'll never need to use another app. He then told me he had some questions he wanted to ask me, the first being how did I find out about the app? (Doesn't that sound like a Lingbe employee or someone at least hired by Lingbe to do a stealth survey? Not that I mind, that's an interesting way to go about it if that's the case, but I'd be interested to hear if you or anyone else encounters someone like that whohas a "series" of questions they'd like to ask you.). We actually chatted for around 25 minutes, and that gave me enough currency to be able to have a chat with a native Japanese speaker. While I was on the call with this first guy, he explained to me in great detail how the app worked, and that I earn 6 lingos for each minute I talk to someone in English, and I pay 10 lingos for each minute I want to speak to someone in Japanese. That instantly got me thinking about the economics of this model. First of all, there's a shortfall there, and one way to make up that shortfall is to watch some ads to earn more lingos, and another is that you can buy lingos with cash (which can add up to be more expensive than any other language learning subscription I've seen). Second of all, it made me realise that this sort of model makes it a lot easier for native English speakers to earn lingos because a lot of people want to learn English, and practice English with you. On the other hand, people from other countries with less popular languages are going to have a harder time earning lingos, and they'll need to pay. This guy told me that's right, and he spends 6,000 rupees a month (because it's the best app and it's worth it). That seems a bit excessive, though. Anyway, I still thought the concept of practicing English with one person and then practicing Japanese with another person is quite a good idea, and I enjoy helping people practice English.

After that call ended, I called a random Japanese person, and this time it seemed like a genuine user. It was definitely an enjoyable and helpful practice session, although I ultimately ran out of lingo credits and had to end the call. (10 of your lingos disappear per minute).

All in all, it's a good concept. But on the other hand, I think it should be possible to get the same sort of practice in Tandem without having to worry about running out of lingo credits.
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devilyoudont
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Re: Japanese and Chill: Devilyoudont's 2020 Log (Wanderlusting EO, ES, and KO)

Postby devilyoudont » Thu May 21, 2020 8:45 pm

I still haven't plucked up the courage to use Lingbe, and it's just existing on my phone. A struggle with me for normal language exchange apps is getting swamped with requests and then feeling too intimidated to get onto the app. My normal language exchange tends to be entirely conducted in one language (either English or Japanese) and we never switch.

I am really awful at language exchange T_T
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devilyoudont
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Re: Japanese and Chill: Devilyoudont's 2020 Log (Wanderlusting EO, ES, and KO)

Postby devilyoudont » Mon May 25, 2020 3:02 am

Between a mild illness (possibly psychosomatic due to stress) and restructuring at my job, I didn't get much done this week

Japanese
Lingq detects I know 3846 words. I didn't even complete a full chapter of 三姉妹探偵団 this week. I guess it wasn't a lack of interest, just kind of feeling too exhausted to read. Every moment of the story is so dramatic it's hard to get sick of it or bored with it.

I normally do a relisten of the previous chapter each week, but I didn't manage to do this for chapter 4 this week. I had some technical difficulty with my computer and just gave up on it.

Listened to an episode of 朗読男女~5分で聞けるオリジナル物語 but I remember literally nothing about it. In one ear and out the other.

I've been having a desire to play some mindless games, so I downloaded some onto my phone. I downloaded モンスターストライク, アナザーエデン, and コード:ドラゴンブラッド.

コード:ドラゴンブラッド is a Chinese game based on a Korean novel which I am for some reason playing in Japanese. I'm not sure whether or not I want to stick with this one in Japanese. The English translation is pretty sketchy, so I assume the Japanese translation is as well. But I don't know if I want to make time to play anymore multi-player games in English, especially if none of my friends nor my husband would be interested in playing.

アナデン is a game that I might actually stick with. This is just a straightforward JRPG made by the same people who did chrono trigger. No complaints about it yet, other than I kind of wanted something a bit more mindless than this. This is a game where I feel like I actually want to pay attention to the story, and not just kind of zone out it with while still being exposed to Japanese.

モンスト is mega weird. It's basically pokemon x gacha x marbles. I want to like this game because it is a game you can just zone out with, but somehow it manages to not be satisfying. It's clear that the developers consider it to be a multiplayer game first and foremost, but the game has no matchmaking system. You need to play the game with your actual friends or someone who is actually physically nearby. From what I've gathered online, the work around for this is a secondary app where you manually look thru listings and find other people to play with... This is too much bother for a glorified version of marbles for me. So I have spent a few hours hanging around in the ghetto that is solo mode. Even after getting thru a bunch of levels, it's still basically impossible for me to lose the game even tho my monsters are really bad. Unless solo mode gets a little more interesting, I'm probably going to be looking for something else to zone out with pretty soon

Esperanto
Lingq detects I know 3805 words. I was barely able to make any progress on Ĉu vi kuiras ĉine. Just was not in a correct mindset to read.

Started the latest episode of Kern punkto but again did not get far.

Did some chatroom shenanigans tho, I guess that takes no effort.

Spanish
Lingq detects I know 1016 words. Same story as the other languages with this one. No other activity besides sporadic reading even attempted.
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thevagrant88
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Re: Japanese and Chill: Devilyoudont's 2020 Log (Wanderlusting EO, ES, and KO)

Postby thevagrant88 » Mon May 25, 2020 12:04 pm

Awesome to see another Japanese enthusiast so close by! I actually just had lunch yesterday in Washington Square Park. If you ever need practice with your Spanish I'd be more than happy to help.
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devilyoudont
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Re: Japanese and Chill: Devilyoudont's 2020 Log (Wanderlusting EO, ES, and KO)

Postby devilyoudont » Mon May 25, 2020 2:57 pm

thevagrant88 wrote:Awesome to see another Japanese enthusiast so close by! I actually just had lunch yesterday in Washington Square Park. If you ever need practice with your Spanish I'd be more than happy to help.
That might be fun after Corona :)
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devilyoudont
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Re: Japanese and Chill: Devilyoudont's 2020 Log (Wanderlusting EO, ES, and KO)

Postby devilyoudont » Mon Jun 01, 2020 3:02 am

Once you add one progress bar to your signature, I guess it's easy for them to start multiplying.

Rather than reporting my "known words" I tossed those onto my signature. These things are kind of a reminder to myself when I'm posting on the forum not just to look at other people's logs all day but get some study in.

Creating the progress bar forced me to chose a goal for these known word totals. So, for now, I decided that reaching Intermediate 2 in both Spanish and Japanese was a reasonable goal. For Esperanto, I don't have a goal to improve my command of the language, only a goal to remain consistently engaged with it.

Setting goals begs a question of "What happens when I hit this goal?" I'm a long way off for all 4 progress bars, but, I think when I get to intermediate 2, the plan will be to reincorporate some kind of output into my study. I will want to keep reading, but it is also just the case that I need to incorporate output into my study in order to push myself. Maybe I don't need to set a goal as high as 12k+ known words to start doing that, but in a way being able to say that I have passive knowledge of 12k+ words removes the excuses. Currently, Esperanto is the only language besides English that I produce output in on a consistent basis.

Japanese
I finished chapter 6 of 三姉妹探偵団... So we now have a second (or possibly 3rd victim if the person who is missing is already dead). I don't feel like they have really introduced suspects and instead the story has just kind of been more of a thriller than a mystery from my perspective. I personally don't mind this at all because it keeps me engaged with the story. Despite not particularly introducing suspects, I find myself forming an idea of whodunnit anyway. I guess I feel like they must have introduced the murderer already as I am just shy of halfway thru the book. And so, of the cast members available, there are only 6 characters that meet the physical description of the murderer (unless they are going to claim it was a woman disguising her voice all along) and 2 of those characters categorically could not have done it. Another 3 have not gotten very much screen time. So I have to imagine it's the male character who keeps popping up yet is not eliminated. We shall see.

Esperanto
I also finished chapter 11 of Ĉu vi kuiras ĉine? This one has the opposite problem, where they seem to constantly be introducing new potential suspects, and there is barely any information presented to the audience to help narrow down the field. We have not even truly established that this is not a suicide yet. This chapter wasn't bad. Discussion of the con-dialect created for this series was present but kept to a minimum, and apparently a comic relief character has been introduced.

Helped out some komencantojn and played Pictionary in Esperanto.

Spanish
In Esperanza renace, the dad finally died. I feel like I've been waiting for this to happen for ages, but it just feels this way due to how slow my pace thru this book is. It is noticeably getting easier to read thru tho, so I think, on average, I am reading slightly more of it each time I sit down with it. Transparently, the father dying is the trigger for all of the conflict which will come in the story, because prior to this Esperanza practically had a perfect life. Having a perfect life has kind of made the character grate on me a little, so I am hopeful that now the story will properly begin and I will roll my eyes a little less often.

Korean
I made an effort to start reading in Korean, then immediately gave up. I just don't have the vocabulary to support it, and knowing about 1 word per 2 sentences is just too frustrating for me to deal with. I think it would be fun to try and learn a language that way, just by jumping in... but Korean is just too opaque for me to do that with it... and I don't have time to take on an Indo-European language where cognates could make such an approach interesting enough for me to continue with it without totally dropping Korean. For now, hanging out with my Korean friend is a strong enough incentive to not drop the language entirely tho, so I reviewed all the lessons I had previously done on Lingodeer this week. But at sometime in the (perhaps distant) future, I feel like it may be fun for me to try a straight to native materials approach with an Indo-European language (maybe French, German, or Russian).

Also completed another lesson on negatives in Korean, resulting in a realization that 이 and 가 must be somewhat corresponding to じゃ in Japanese... however, these two don't seem to an etymology the way 는 and 은 seem to. The total dissimilarity between these two particles which have the same function kind of leaves me scratching my head, so I will probably try to research this more in the next week.
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Re: Japanese and Chill: Devilyoudont's 2020 Log (Wanderlusting EO, ES, and KO)

Postby golyplot » Tue Jun 02, 2020 6:16 am

devilyoudont wrote:Something that felt kind of interesting about watching Spanish content subtitled in English was feeling my brain pick out spanish words after the fact. So often I couldn't understand what the male characters were saying in Pan's Labyrinth (understanding male speech... eternal problem across all languages?!), but I would see the English subtitle and I would realize "oh yes, he did say that word." Very strange feeling.


I've noticed this a lot, in multiple languages. I think it's only natural, since recognition is easier than recall.
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