CDR's Japanese and Portuguese Language Log

[CDR]

Portuguese Super Challenge:
...So I decided to spend $7 and get an e-book I am actually interested in reading at the moment.

I got "Hoje eu vou dormir na rua". It is interviews with homeless people from São Paulo. This is much more "on brand" for me and is easier to read. Kindle isn't showing page numbers, but they seem to be embedded in the book itself. It looks like it is around 150ish pages.

Almost one year later, I finished "Hoje Eu vou Dormir na Rua..." last week. Regardless of my lack of commitment to finishing it, it was an interesting book. There was quite a bit of slang that my Portuguese-English dictionaries on the Kindle were unable to define. Even when I was in a place with Wi-Fi, the translation option was usual unable to make sense of it either. I asked my wife about many of these, and many of them not even my wife understood. The authors occasionally provided clarifications in brackets, I think more could have been provided. The book is not targeted for learners, so that is only wishful thinking on my part. I noticed it is only $3 now, I would definitely buy it at that price.

For the Super Challenge, I had to figure out the number of pages the book had. Amazon states that the book has ~600 pages printed, however, I believe this is wrong. The number of "locations" in the book is similar to books that are around 200 pages. The e-book itself also has page numbers "baked in" and the final page is 160. So, that's the first Portuguese book I've completed! That's '3' Super Challenge Books out of 100, . I'm definitely going to make it .

I've continued to read "Os Dois Morrem No Final". I am halfway through now. This book is much easier to read, even in print, and I found that similar to reading in English, I can read this book and imagine everything that is happening in my head. I will purchase the next book in the series once this one is finished. When I finish this book, it will be 11 books completed for the Super Challenge .

[iguanamon]

...I finished "Hoje Eu vou Dormir na Rua..." last week. Regardless of my lack of commitment to finishing it, it was an interesting book. There was quite a bit of slang that my Portuguese-English dictionaries on the Kindle were unable to define. Even when I was in a place with Wi-Fi, the translation option was usual unable to make sense of it either. I asked my wife about many of these, and many of them not even my wife understood. The authors occasionally provided clarifications in brackets, I think more could have been provided. ...

I use two sources for slang I can't figure out on my own in Portuguese:
Dicionário Informal, whic is similar to the "urban dictionary" site in English.

I also sometimes use English Experts to reverse engineer Portuguese. This is an English-learners site in Portuguese for Brazilians. They ask in their forum how to say "X" in English and... there you go. It works often enough, but Dicionário Informal is really good and is my go to resource when I can't figure out a word or phrase from context.

Well done with the Portuguese reading. Keep up the good work!

[CDR]

Well done with the Portuguese reading. Keep up the good work!

Thank you for these links and kind words! I completely forgot about dicionário informal. I'll have to go back and see if I can lookup any of those undefinable words/phrase there.

My wife and I went on a trip to NYC over the long weekend. I planned out a stop at a second hand book store near our hotel so I could continue my habit of 積ん読. I got two books. One is a short anthology of stories from Afro-Brazilian/African culture (written in Portuguese). The other is a Japanese book about 9/11. I guess I ruined my tsundoku habit however, as I started reading the anthology collection.

I had a bit of buyers remorse with the 9/11 book in Japanese however. While it is something I would definitely read in English, there is no furigana, so who knows when I will actually be able to read it. But you know, at the time, it was really the only good option. Then while we were walking around, I ran into Kinokuniya near Times Square. Whoops! Should have done some more research before hand.

It was a nice store, and the Japanese books were really well priced. I saw a lot of books that are on my Amazon jp wishlist, and they had a lot of books for young adults/kids with furigana in them. I didn't want to indulge my book collecting habit further though, so I left the store empty handed. Had I known better, I would have skipped the 9/11 book and bought a few books at Kinokuniya instead. Live and learn I guess.

I had planned to go to BOOK OFF, but we didn't have time to go there in the end.

In other news, I was reading the news and found this amusing headline: オオカミ少年などと騒いでる場合じゃないぞ。日本は早くミサイル反撃能力を持て .

オオカミ少年 Translates to "boy raised by wolves" or "boy who cried wolf". The author of the article is using this in reference to the leader of North Korea, .

This was also the first time I've seen ぞ, which is a final particle used by men to emphasize emotions in their monologue, or to draw attention to something.

[CDR]

Study Japanese and getting wreckt by the JLPT N3
You can imagine with my lack of posting, that my Japanese studying has not gone as planned!

Instead of another 600+ hours, I studied about 200 hours this year instead, maybe. I gave up tracking my hours when I started studying again because the JLPT was approaching and I felt that maybe the hour tracking was stressing me out and making me less likely to study (this turned out to be unfounded, I have resumed tracking my time).

I took the N3, again. Somehow, I studied much less, but I was much less stressed, I was quite sure I was going to fail, but I tried my best, I over focused on my Anki backlog however, I should have focused on completing way more reading and listening tests. Oh well!

When I first started the Vocab/Kanji section, the the questions went one of two ways:
I have no idea what the answer is
The answer is clearly O

Then about half way through, my brain had warmed up and things got easier to read, and I was better able to make educated guesses when I wasn't sure. Maybe I guessed my way to a pass in this section.

For reading/grammar, the first two or three I struggled again, but I focused more on trying to get the gist and reading to answer the questions and it got a bit better. Maybe I passed.

The listening, brutal, when I understood the dialogue, I didn't understand the question it wanted me to answer, or vice versa. There were a few I think I got right. Very unlikely I passed.

Interactions with Japanese People and struggling with interest

I didn't really talk about it, but overall my interactions with Japanese people this year have been mostly negative. I've seem to be having trouble finding people to connect with and practice. I've been meeting with a language exchange partner semi-regularly, but I am feeling we are not a great match. I have no problem with laughing at my own mistakes, but the laughing can go on for too long and sometimes it seems the source of the enjoyment is that I made a mistake. Strange.

I want to give up and find someone else, but the vast majority of messages I send to Japanese people go unanswered, or the conversation doesn't last long. Sometimes, it is because they are not a great match either, but sometimes it's because I am just too busy to try and arrange more meetings with a native speaker where there is a +50% chance they don't show up.

In the summer, my negative interactions with a few Japanese people (and the lack of ability to get any others to interact with me!) had me thinking of quitting studying Japanese all together. I mean, giving how little I've studied, it kind of seems like I did stop anyways. There was once or twice where I thought it would be better to cancel my flight as well.

I've mostly talked myself out of giving up, or I imagine that, but I didn't come back to studying until October.

Near the end of summer, I met a Japanese guy that lives in a city near by, I think he would be a better language exchange partner, as he has a general interest in learning language, including Portuguese, But, we've only met once so far this year, with our second meeting coming up soon. I also had a more positive interaction with another Japanese person on Tandem.

The Future of my Japanese, and reflections on the past
I think my biggest issue so far is how much time I've spent in Anki. Last year, I spent over 50% of my study time in Anki. This year, it was around 20%, but, most of the other time was spent using textbooks. Until I really focus on the actual skills of reading, listening, and speaking, I don't think I am going to be able to get much further.

My trip is in April, it seems logical that I should concern myself with speaking and listening.

And yet, my study plan (for the future) so far is mostly concerned with working through my Anki backlog.

I am floating the idea of putting a hard % limit on how much Anki I am allowed to do. If I want to study around 21 hours a week with a 10% Anki limit, that is only 2.1 hours, which seems very small.

Portuguese
Same old stuff going on here, mostly watching stuff on Globo Play and chatting with my wife or people on Tandem. I fell out of my reading habit.

[golyplot]

As far as conversation practice goes, I've been thinking about trying ChatGPT. Obviously it isn't quite as reliable as a native speaker, but it saves you all the effort of trying to find and coordinate with a real human and it won't laugh at your mistakes. I heard that they added a voice option, although I haven't tried it myself. In general, I keep hearing about people using AI for all sorts of things and think that I need to try it myself, but never get around to it.

[CDR]

As far as conversation practice goes, I've been thinking about trying ChatGPT. Obviously it isn't quite as reliable as a native speaker, but it saves you all the effort of trying to find and coordinate with a real human and it won't laugh at your mistakes. I heard that they added a voice option, although I haven't tried it myself. In general, I keep hearing about people using AI for all sorts of things and think that I need to try it myself, but never get around to it.

Actually, I used an app called AutoLang for its 7 day free trial, which is basically ChatGTP with Whisper (that does speech to text), I tried it with Japanese, but I honestly did not understand the questions, or have much to say in Japanese. So, I've used it for Portuguese, it's actually quite interesting, and super convenient to use. It gives you a topic to talk about, you talk about it, then it tracks how many words you use, how many of them you've used for the first time (in the app), and you can speak everything.

The only problem is, the transcription can be slow, so it is no where close to the speed of conversation with a native.

I haven't used its since my 7 day trail ended, so not sure what the free version offers.

https://apps.apple.com/ca/app/autolang/id6449036780

https://play.google.com/store/search?q= ... n_CA&gl=US

[CDR]

Dec 4/5
Because I am on a night shift schedule, my "day" goes across two days.

I watched four episodes of Seinfeld in Japanese. It was enjoyable. I heard the word for Import/Export and it made me laugh, because I remember adding that card to my Anki last year, wondering if I was going to hear that word anytime soon.

Most of the listen was just hearing words or short phrases.

Dec 5/6
Nada, mostly watched videos from other learners, read some logs here, thinking about what I should do to improve my speaking.

I want to avoid too much ruminating about things I will do in the log going forward, so I thought I would just copy some links I found:

This lists a bunch of Japanese media they imagine is good for beginners
https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/ ... /pub?pli=1

On this list is Love Hina, which is actually a manga I read... Maybe 15 years ago in English.

From those recommendations, and from looking around on vndb.org, it seems that the vast majority of VNs are 18+. There are only a few listed as "All Ages" in their recommendations. Or, maybe I just do not know how to search of them.

This one that is all ages and is said to be very easy (all Kana), はなひらっ！Reading the description and etc, it is probably not my taste, but I was shocked to see it is on sale for only 935 JPY??? I like a good deal . It makes me wonder about the market for VNs in Japan and how the economics works out.

https://www.dlsite.com/home/work/=/prod ... 67899.html

That list also recommends a Manga, Espirit, this seems like it would be a good read: https://www.mangaupdates.com/series.html?id=36165

Dec 6/7
I've started with reading articles on NHK Easy I previously read (It's been over a year since I read them, I think), it soothed my anxiety about how much Japanese ability I lost, because I was able to understand the articles quite well, much faster than the first time I read them. I still had to look up words, but the grammar wasn't that much of a struggle.

Day isn't over yet. I am going to limit myself to 30 minutes of Anki per day, with the other 2.5 hours being used for anything else in Japanese study, but reading/listening to graded/native content or practicing output should be preferred over JLPT textbooks or any other kind of grind..

[CDR]

The rest of Dec 6/7
I worked on replying to people on Tandem, that was all in Portuguese, though. I set up my browser windows, so I would write my replies in LanguageTool on the left, with Linugee to the right, so I could look up words. Then, I would try to apply the knowledge from the corrections LanguageTool was giving me in the next sentence I wrote. I think I actually learned quite a bit doing this, many of the mistakes I am making are the same handful, again and again.

On the topic of "mistakes I have been making for a long time", a few weeks ago after explaining to my wife that I really want her to correct my pronunciation, along with grammar etc, she discovered I was saying "antes" incorrectly. That was a good one, after she corrected me, I started hearing it everywhere.

Back to replying to people on Tandem, if I felt I was using a lot of words from memory, I would also use DeepL to translate my sentence back into English, to make sure the words I was producing from my mind were correct. This was a good workflow, and I didn't track it, but I suspect I learned quite a few new words from my own lookups.

I also tried using ChatGPT, I asked it to provide me with what a typical Brazilian would say in Portuguese if X occurred (the person they were speaking to said they were sick, the person they were speaking to said they were married, the person they were speaking to said they were going to eat lunch) etc. I didn't note down the answers, but maybe I will try again and then ask my wife what she thinks.

I started skimming the first pages of "Macroeconomia da estagnação brasileira". I think it will be an interesting book, although I do not know if I will read it now.

[CDR]

Not much studying has occurred since my last post.

I've been too busy thinking about more important things like, what should I do with my language log (that I mostly ignored this year) as 2023 comes and the goal I set two years ago ends?

Two titles I am currently debating between for the new title:

CDR's Language Log: Dream Big, Fail Bigger

CDR's Language Log: Learning to appreciate my progress and ignore the awful results

On that note, I didn't accomplish my goals, so please join my Patreon and learn how you can fail too!

More Serious Reflections on the Project of 1700 hours of Japanese study in 2 years
What good is the reflection if we don't know my real total?

2023:
168 Hours of Japanese Study (much less than the 200 hours I estimated in a previous post, the problem is, I studied for about 2 weeks without tracking anything, and they were my most studious weeks of the year, probably competitive with my best weeks last year, so IMO ~200 is on the money, but I don't have the receipts, so )

2022:
616 Hours of Japanese Study

Total: 784 Hours of Japanese.

Only 916 hours short!

Of course, all that shoot for the moon stuff. I was really hoping for N3 in two years. I didn't get there either, the estimate for passing the N3 is 950–1700 hours of study. So, only 166 hours short on the short end. That doesn't leave me as bitter .

I often framed this goal as "mostly pointless". Upon reflection, there was a big desire to practice being a more studious person who studied for a test/exam throughout the year instead of cramming at the last minute. When I first started this 1700 Hour study goal in 2022, I was positive that I would be unable to cram for a Japanese language test the night before and therefore thought this would be an excellent way to improve my study habits (not that this really matters, It's been 5 years since I've attended a college or university...).

If I consider this goal, 2022 was a success. I stumbled in November, but otherwise, I studied Japanese throughout the year. That was mission accomplished. I posted this after the JLPT last year:

... I am happy to have reached over 600 hours of study this year. I have to stop and appreciate the accomplishment...

I did not internalize this. I felt that I ought to be happy with my efforts last year, but I was not.

This was foolish. I should have been so much happier with my success last year and stayed hype to keep it going. After barely studying and writing the JLPT again, I feel like garbage. I was less nervous this year, but it was only because I studied so little, I couldn't possibly believe I was going to pass.

There were so many things I listed in my lessons learned last year, that I didn't learn from, here are the ones I think are most relevant.

Japanese Study in General

• Do not stop studying for bad reasons. Even if you have good reasons to stop studying, strive to do a minimal amount everyday you can
• When you stop studying, return to studying as soon as possible. A 1 or 2 day lapse is no big deal. 2 weeks without studying is a tragedy
• You cannot make up for lost months, 15 minutes a day is better than 0
• Focus on the wildly important - Pick a few goals and stick with them for as long as possible
• Keeping a table of predicted vs actual hours studied over your desk actually works
  

New reflections:
What would I change if I could go back to 2021 and start this again:
1) One overarching goal was sufficient.
2) Detailed time tracking is useful, but annoying and time-consuming
3) More gratitude and appreciation for the progress I've made, even if it's just a drop in the bucket of the overall work I need to put in to get good at Japanese.

What I would have changed this year:
1) I should have kept my overarching goal in mind and thought about it often. I rarely thought about the 1700 hours this year, last year, I thought about it all the time.
2) I should have studied
3) I blocked myself from browsing this forum, along with other websites I normally browse. This caused me to study less, for sure. As much of a time sink browsing the forum can be, it keeps language learning at the front of my mind, and lets me see what other people are doing.

[CDR]

One final post about 2023, I think.

Catching COVID
I had plans on how to kick off a new milestone in language learning now, instead of waiting for the new year, however, I managed to catch COVID and have been down and out for about two weeks now. This is the first time I've had COVID, that I can confirm at least. It's been awful, I was procrastinating my latest booster out of laziness. Big mistake!

Portuguese
It doesn't seem like I mentioned it here, after taking a year to finish "Hoje Eu Vou Dormir na Rua", my first native book in Portuguese, I managed to completed two more in June:

História e Cultura Afro-Brasileira e Africana. Repensando as Práticas Pedagógicas
Very short stories from Afro-Brazilian or African culture, ones that you would tell to kids, then a discussion of how to teach Afro-Brazilian culture in the classroom. It was an interesting read.

White Hat Linux
The title of the book suggests it is in English, but it isn't, it is written in PT by a Brazilian. It was a simple introduction to some info security tools on Linux, nothing crazy. It was pretty easy to read.

Then, stuck in a room with COVID, I tried to read more, so this month I finished in Portuguese:

Os Nois Dois Morrem no Final
A good young-adult book. I tried to read the last 1/4 a bit faster, but noticed my comprehension really dropped, so I stopped doing that. I think I understood the book in general, although there were some paragraphs where understanding was low, but it didn't seem required for the story, so I just skimmed it. The closer I got to the end, the more I looked words up because I wanted to understand the story.

Now Reading: Japão Moderno by Christopher Goto-Jones
It's both more and less understandable than Os Nois Dois Morrem no Final. It contains a lot more nouns whose meanings are obvious, even though I have never seen them before, but also a lot of mystery verbs that I have to look up.

Not Book Reading, but still Reading
I thought I should sign up for a newsletter about Brazilian politics/news, because I have two newsletters I get and read regularly, both in English, one about Canadian politics, the other about North Korea.

So, I discovered CNN Brasil has a few different newsletters. I signed up for the news one and the one about popular culture. I read them both a few times, then got COVID and haven't read any of my newsletters for two weeks

I've also discovered someone has forked LWT and created an improved version (although, not much easier to installer for non-technical people, sorry ),

https://github.com/HugoFara/lwt

You can see all the new and/or improved features compared to the OG LWT:

https://hugofara.github.io/lwt/docs/newfeatures.html

Two features I think are the most interesting/useful:

• It uses MeCab for Japanese Text Segmentation (well, this is kind of essential, OG LWT is not usable with Japanese for this reason)
• You can add RSS feeds and then import articles from the feed!

Not-Reading
I've been trying to chat more with my wife in Portuguese and with other people on Tandem, but it's been inconsistent at best.