CDR's Japanese and Portuguese Language Log

[CDR]

Finally managed to get on again, not sure how much longer I will fight the 504s.

Jan 8 2024

Japanese
Hours of Japanese Studied : 16 / 500 Hours Completed

Eat away at your Anki Japanese Vocab Card Backlog : 1549 / 2365 Backlogged Reviews Re-Integrated
Continue to focus on my current reviews (kinda). Although, a few days ago I started doing 5 new cards, then bumped it up to 6 because my math was telling me that 6 a day would have me finish all my current new cards by the end of the year.

Today, when doing my reviews, I started searching and adding new words that had at least one kanji reading the same as the subset of words I am currently struggling to remember. We'll see how this strategy pans out. I added 6 cards this way and pulled one from the backlog as well.

Complete Minna no Nihongo Listening Task I 25 : 101 / 101 MP3s Completed
I'm just glad to finish it.

Complete the Japanese Minimal Pair Deck https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/1299714260 : 100 / 202 New Cards Seen
Almost halfway, I did another 30 as they continue to take very little time to review.

Portuguese

Watched/Listened to : 3 / 70 hours
I watched one episode of Samantha! a Netflix Original Series. Wiki says this was the third series Netflix produced in Brazil. The main character is a bit difficult to like. I realize that this is probably one of the points of the show, but anyway. Douglas Silva plays the father, I know he was in Cidade de Deus, but I know him most because he was in Big Brother Brasil 2022 .

Mentioning BBB, it started today, my wife loves BBB, I promised her I would watch it more often. I watched the main program with her, and then we watched the stream for a while today. Hopefully it will be an interesting year. Davi and Isabella are promising. The memes Brazilians generate about the show might be better than the show

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Jan 9 2024

Japanese
Hours of Japanese Studied : 17 / 500 Hours Completed
I read more of アナと雪の女王. I tried looking up every word I didn't know, but it quickly got boring. I did this for about an hour, mentioning that, I fell quite short of my study goals today, I will do better tomorrow.

Eat away at your Anki Japanese Vocab Card Backlog : 1549 / 2365 Backlogged Reviews Re-Integrated
The method of adding extra words with at least one Kanji with the same reading as words I am currently struggling with was a big success, reviews today went quickly and smoothly, only 28 minutes, that feels like the fastest it's been in a long time.

Complete the Japanese Minimal Pair Deck https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/1299714260 : 130 / 202 New Cards Seen
I added another 30 news, the time to review remains really low, so.

Portuguese
Watched/Listened to : 6 / 70 hours

Watched more BBB with my wife. I think I could make it to 70 hours on BBB alone, and BBB only runs for threeish months. We'll see, I guess it depends on how much I am working etc.

[CDR]

I know the site was rebuilt, but I am terrified to browse and run into another 504
Here's some of the back log:

Jan 10 2024
I've been entering each day into my Zim journal https://zim-wiki.org/, given the 504s that have been happening. At the start of the year, I went back through my log and copied everything into Zim based on the date I posted. So, regardless of what happens to the site, I will be able to keep my log and studies going.

The forum makes a big difference, however, because people can come and comment and give you feedback/advice.

@Golyplot, thanks for the tips about the keyboard shortcut, I was putting words I knew well into the never forget, but it was taking forever. I will keep messing around with it.

Japanese
Hours of Japanese Studied : 21 / 500 Hours Completed
I've passed 20 hours!

If it wasn't clear, the tasks I list in my posts were determined at the start of the year. I had 10 previously unfinished goals/courses/whatever to complete and 7 new ones. Ideally, I finish them all (or a majority) before adding more. Since today, I've completed 3/10 previously unfinished goals/courses/whatever (:lol:) and 1/7 new goals/courses/whatever. Then, I added another previously unfinished goal, so I am 3/11 now.

Scope creep is always a concern, and it is already kind of happening.

Complete the Japanese Minimal Pair Deck https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/1299714260 : 202 / 202 New Cards Seen
I just went ahead and did the last 70 cards. There were some real ear strainers whose only difference is pitch accent. I can hear a difference when they are back to back, but they are difficult to figure out in isolation.

I will continue to do the reviews on these, but this completes the goal of getting through them at least. This is the first thing in the "new" category I've completed (I actually have a spreadsheet where I've listed old/new things I want to complete, I started with 10 uncompleted tasks and 7 new, and I am trying to complete what is there before adding more)

5 hours of Pitch Accent Minimal Pair practice https://kotu.io/ : 31 / 300 Minutes Completed
On to the next thing in the new category. I found this site on Tofugu, they have a minimal pair test for pitch accent

Did 31 min today
All: 50 of 74 (68%)
Heiban / Odaka: 24 of 31 (77%)
Atamadaka: 16 of 30 (53%)
Nakadaka: 10 of 13 (77%)

Also did their minimal pair syllabary test for 17 minutes
ツ vs ス: 27 of 34 (79%)
ド vs ロ: 22 of 22 (100%)
ダ vs ラ: 26 of 27 (96%)
デ vs レ: 27 of 30 (90%)
Short vs Long Vowel: 26 of 33 (79%)
Short vs Long Consonant: 19 of 27 (70%)

Listen/Read 40 Nihongo School Blog Posts : 4 / 40 Posts Read
Not sure if I ever shared this goal (maybe I set it in mid 2021), my intention was to read all the blog posts on https://www.nihongoschool.co.uk/nihongoblog. Never made much headway back then.

I got started with the 4 most recent posts, I try to listen and read along first, then go through and capture unknown words using Yomichan and figure out any sentences I did not understand.

I set the goal to complete 40 posts. At the moment, the total number of posts is 209.

Read/Re-Read/Listen all of Yomujp's Articles N3-N6 : 36 / 161 Articles Read
Yomujp N6 Articles : 36 / 36 Articles Read
https://yomujp.com/n5l/

Another goal I didn't finish. Since I last checked, there were more articles added, so I will start from scratch. I started and finished the N6 articles today, they were very easy, as expected. For these, I listened, read, and shadowed at the same time.

Eat away at your Anki Japanese Vocab Card Backlog : 1556 / 2365 Backlogged Reviews Re-Integrated

I did the regular stuff today, then brought in additional news from my reading. Some of them came from the backlog, so the backlog shrank a bit. I switched the deck to take the news from the most recent additions, we'll see what that changes.

I am going to stop messing with the deck for a week. No setting changes, no extra news or backlogged cards, etc. So I can get a better idea of what the workload will look like.

Portuguese
Watched Globo News with my wife while eating dinner, read some news on Instagram, not worth counting but still something. I am going to wait until I find a good groove with Japanese before trying to get more serious study going.

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Jan 11 2024
I could have done better today, I was predicting that I could get my hour in with Anki alone, but Anki only took 22 minutes, but I was rushing at the end of the day to get it all done regardless.

Japanese
Hours of Japanese Studied : 22 / 500 Hours Completed

Portuguese
Nothing I can recall

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Jan 12 2024
Another under 1-hour day for Japanese. Again, I was working. I will make sure to shower before work, so I can use my break to study. Doing before or after work is not working during the night shift.

Attempting to do after work just leads to my sleep schedule getting messed up, because it is day time, I naturally want to stay awake, it is better to go to bed ASAP and not have to deal with a shifting bedtime.

Japanese
Hours of Japanese Studied : 22 / 500 Hours Completed

Anki reviews took only 18 minutes to complete. I think my reviews are getting faster because the cards only show a single word on the front, I tried not to read the sentences before, but I would end up reading them anyway. The other factor is that I have not added anything extra. I am sticking to not changing anything about the deck until Jan 17.

Portuguese
Watched BBB with my wife again. But not counting it because I didn't feel that focused.

[CDR]

Sorry for sloppy/inconsistent formatting, I was getting tired of doing the formatting my entries for a forum I couldn't get on .

Last night, I managed to get on the forum after the first downtime, but before the second, so I met the 504 again and was shook to my very core

Jan 13 2024
Japanese
Hours of Japanese Studied : 22 / 500 Hours Completed

Anki continues, I continue to change nothing until the 17th.

Portuguese
Watched 30 minutes of BBB with my wife before work.

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Jan 14 2024
Japanese

5 hours of Pitch Accent Minimal Pair practice https://kotu.io/ : 65 / 300 Minutes Completed

34 Minutes of Pitch Accent Minimal Pairs... I continue to be able to hear the difference, but I don't have a clear sense of which is which in isolation.
My score is worse than last time
All: 84 of 168 (50%)
Heiban / Odaka: 42 of 80 (53%)
Atamadaka: 33 of 71 (46%)
Nakadaka: 9 of 17 (53%)

I did two more per minute compared to last time, maybe I need to go slower.

At this moment it feels like it is going to take 100 hours to actually start being able to answer the questions correctly the majority of the time. Hopefully that isn't true. If it doesn't feel any different after two more hours on it, I am probably going to give up and move on to something else.

Complete Try N5 : 108 / 146 Pages Completed
Another one of the N5 books I almost finished but ran out of time. I struggled with the same problem as yesterday with the JLPT test, I started falling asleep around the 25 minute mark.

I am on the night shift still, I think my sleep is just poor quality.

5 Hours of Number Listening Practice https://langpractice.com/japanese : 64 / 300 Minutes Completed
You listen to the number, and type it. The interface counts your streak, which resets when you don't answer within a certain number of seconds. Unlike the textbook, it didn't put me to sleep.

Streak 206 for 0-10
Streak 515 for 0-10
Streak 20~ for 0-100
Streak 101 for 0-100

Compared to the Pitch Accent Minimal Pair, I improved at this much faster (I've done this once or twice before the new year.)

Anki
Another new low as I continue to not add extra or change anything. It took me only 14 minutes total between both decks. I think my review load was like 39 cards for the vocab deck, tomorrow will be 44.

Portuguese
I watched a bit of BBB with my wife before work and I replied to some folks on Tandem.

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Jan 15 2024
My sleep improved a bit. I could have done better today.

Japanese
Just Anki, 15 minutes, I'm not sure if I've ever done this few.

Hours of Japanese Studied 26:28:53/500 Hours Completed

Portuguese
Maybe I sent a message or two on Tandem, or maybe not...

[CDR]

The 16th is the last poorly formatted day and I am now all caught up.

Jan 16 2024
Japanese

5 Hours of Number Listening Practice https://langpractice.com/japanese 124/300 Minutes Completed
Feeling good, found out they have years, did 30 mintes of 0-10 + 0-100, then 30 minutes of 2000-2030

2 hours of Number Speaking Practice https://langpractice.com/japanese 15/120 Minutes Completed
Not bad

5 hours of Pitch Accent Minimal Pair practice https://kotu.io/ 93/300 Minutes Completed
Very bad, lost the stats, but it was very low, hard to focus. Tried reading the Wikipedia page for pitch accent, but it didn't seem to help.

Portuguese
Well, it really seems like I never get any PT practice in doesn't it?!?!?!?

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Jan 17 2024
Japanese
Hours of Japanese Studied : 32 / 500 Hours Completed
Over 30 hours

Cure Dolly
I feel like every Japanese learner on the internet is aware of Cure Dolly.
I tried watching her videos before, but her voice is unappealing. Regardless, I decided to give it another try.

I wasn't impressed, so I tried a few more videos. At some point, she started talking about things that I have some vague understanding of causing a few grammar points to click for me.

I tried reading some Japanese unrelated to the videos to 'see' the things she was talking about. I think some things were a bit easier to read. I've completed the first 18 videos in her "Japanese from scratch" playlist.

Comprehensible Japanese (the YouTube Channel)
I've been aware of this YouTube channel for a long time. In the back of my mind, I've want to watch all the videos on this channel since 2021. I decided to test the difficult levels of the videos and see what I thought. I only used subtitles if I mention it.

Absolute beginner videos are too easy for me, I cannot passively listen, I get bored. I'm thinking I could dictate or shadow them.

Beginner videos are fine, shadowing is also possible. Maybe 1 word unknown in the two videos I watched.

Intermediate videos: more words missing. Some of the grammar points are known to me, but in speech I don't recognize it/understand it that well. Which tells me that more listening at this level would be +++++

Advanced videos: I watched the first few minutes of just one video. I could understand the gist of what was being said (as far as I can tell), with subtitles. But a lot of words/grammar were a mystery to me, and I couldn't read the subtitles fast enough. When I stopped the video to read the subtitles, I can see there is grammar I am completely unfamiliar with.

Peppa Pig
I watched 24 minutes of Peppa Pig as well, before deciding it was time for bed. The automatic subtitles don't work well for Peppa. Peppa has a lot of English loan words.

Too much Peppa Pig and I might start making pig noises while speaking Japanese

The thing I noticed other than loan words is that "Momma Pig" uses "あら", which I remember Mangajin noted is a feminine expression to express surprise.

Anki
I read a post from @sfuqua who changed his Anki to use the FSRS algorithm. I read about it, then enabled it myself. I read that most people end up seeing less reviews when they enable FSRS.

Me on the other hand, my true retention on my vocabulary deck is awful, in the last month it was 55%. I believe this is because I brought the deck back from the dead and have an enormous backlog of reviews. This past week retention was 71.4%, so with FSRS set to target a 90% retention rate, I should be seeing more reviews, not less.

Today I had an exciting first with my pitch accent deck. I was able to finally listen to the pitch accent cards and say "that's tail-high" or "that's flat" and be correct.

Does this extended to the minimal pitch accent trainer I've been practising with? The answer was no. I got 1/5 questions correct in a quick test.

Portuguese
I honestly have no clue, I watched some BBB, not enough to count.

[CDR]

Jan 18 2024
Japanese

Hours of Japanese Studied : 35 / 500 Hours Completed

18 days into 2024, it is clearly the perfect time for a review of progress to date

Completed
'Unfinished' Courses/Books/Challenges

• Complete Nihongo Challenge for JLPT N4 & N5 Kanji Finished 02/Jan/2024 : 258 / 258 Pages Completed
• Complete Minna no Nihongo Listening Task I 25 : 101 / 101 MP3s Completed
• Yomujp N6 Articles : 36 / 36 Articles Read

New Courses/Books/Challenges

• Complete the Japanese Minimal Pair Deck https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/1299714260 : 202 / 202 New Cards Seen

In Progress
'Unfinished' Courses/Books/Challenges

• Complete Try N5 : 108 / 146 Pages Completed
• Read/Re-Read all of Yomujp's Articles N3-N6 : 36 / 161 Articles Read
• Eat away at your Anki Japanese Vocab Card Backlog : 1567 / 2365 Backlogged Reviews Re-Integrated
• Read/Listen to 40 Nihongo Blog Posts : 4 / 40 Posts Read

New Courses/Books/Challenges

• 5 Hours of Number Listening Practice https://langpractice.com/japanese : 124 / 300 Minutes Completed
• 2 hours of Number Speaking Practice https://langpractice.com/japanese : 15 / 120 Minutes Completed
• 5 hours of Pitch Accent Minimal Pair practice https://kotu.io/ : 93 / 300 Minutes Completed

Pitch Accent
I spent almost two hours reading about pitch accent, doing minimal pair tests etc to see if I could make any further progress, but no difference yet.

I did learn some things though.

If the morpheme of a Sino-Japanese word is written with an:

• お段 (おこそとのほ…) mora followed by the mora う then pronounce the う as an extended vowel (Ex: 投稿 as トーコー, 卒業 as ソツギョー）
• え段 (えけせてねへ…) mora followed by the mora い then pronounce the い as an extended vowel（Ex: 衛星 as エーセー, 命令 as メーレー）
• う段 (うくすつぬふ…) mora followed by the mora う then pronounce the う as an extended vowel Ex: 空港 as クーコー, 夕方 as ユーガタ）

I've wondered before why sometimes う/い marks a long vowel, and sometimes it does not, but I just accepted it and moved on. Now I know when!

As moras are the basic units of Japanese, syllables are made up of one or two moras. Japanese contains two types of syllables:

heavy syllable:

• 2 moras long
• composed of an independent mora 自立拍 (じりつはく) + special (dependent) mora 特殊拍 (とくしゅはく)

light syllable

• 1 mora long
• a singular 自立拍 (じりつはく)

The concept of a syllable is relevant for pitch accent, because:

Each phrase starts with an initial rise in pitch and maintains that pitch until a marked syllable, where at that point the pitch drops and stays low until the next phrase...

It is easier to reason about pitch accent by using syllables instead of mora. For example, we can note that: the accent can never be placed on the second mora of a heavy syllable. Thus, the accent is always placed on the first mora of any given syllable...

Additionally, when an accent phrase starts with a heavy syllable containing a 長音 (ちょうおん) or 撥音 (はつおん) there is not much of a rise from the 1st to 2nd mora. Ex: 高校 (コーコー)、 新聞 (シンブン)

Sourced from https://kotu.io/article/44E29916-1BFF-4CE5-80A0-E8B0DABA757F

While we are here, @Picaboo had a useful fact in their log, I've shortened it for the quote.

The Chinese sound tone pallet was compressed into a few sounds in Japanese. To guess the ON reading of new kanji, you will have about a 50% chance of getting the first letter right if you guess that it starts with K or S... So it's better to focus on the more distinctive sounds when memorizing, most often how it ends...

Sourced from The Kanji Code: See the Sounds with Phonetic Components and Visual Patterns

Eat away at your Anki Japanese Vocab Card Backlog : 1567 / 2365 Backlogged Reviews Re-Integrated

I think the new algorithm changed something about my reviews, the backlog suddenly moved back into the main deck. I pulled it back out and added 10+ from the backlog and reviewed today.

Today reviews felt slow, I am trying to switch to day shift, so I am tired and behind on sleep. They were only a few minutes slower from the reviews the day before, so it seems to be more of a perceptual problem.

Portuguese
I watched BBB with my wife for a bit, before falling asleep on the couch as I try to switch to a regular day schedule.

[Picaboo]

There is a document with all Cure Dolly transcripts on the web. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Xpu ... HARHc/edit

The copyright is likely infringed. But the author is dead (sad, she was a very clever person with a unique approach) and nobody has complained about the violation. Personally, when I read it, I just run a Cure Dolly video silent on my tablet so someone gets paid. The text is way more convenient and editable.

When I'm taking a break in learning I'm in the process of reading your log, sfuqua's log and golyplot's logs. I started with golyplots so that's a long journey!

[vonPeterhof]

If the morpheme of a Sino-Japanese word is written with an:

• お段 (おこそとのほ…) mora followed by the mora う then pronounce the う as an extended vowel (Ex: 投稿 as トーコー, 卒業 as ソツギョー）
• え段 (えけせてねへ…) mora followed by the mora い then pronounce the い as an extended vowel（Ex: 衛星 as エーセー, 命令 as メーレー）
• う段 (うくすつぬふ…) mora followed by the mora う then pronounce the う as an extended vowel Ex: 空港 as クーコー, 夕方 as ユーガタ）

I've wondered before why sometimes う/い marks a long vowel, and sometimes it does not, but I just accepted it and moved on. Now I know when!

I'd say that the お段+う=ō doesn't just apply to Sino-Japanese words, as there is plenty of native Japanese vocabulary where the long ō is indicated with an う. The use of う vs お for the vowel extension is determined by etymology: う is used where the historical form of the word had う or ふ (有難う: ありがたう -> ありがとう／アリガトー, 今日: けふ -> きょう／キョー) , while word-internal お in native vocabulary usually comes from either を or ほ (須佐之男: すさのを -> すさのお, 氷: こほり -> こおり). The only cases in native vocabulary where お段 followed by う doesn't represent a single long vowel seem to be those where the two morae belong to separate morphemes, like the う at the end of dictionary forms of verbs like あらそう, or in names like 小梅 (こ+うめ).

Now え段+い seems to be subject to a lot more regional and individual variance (I think I remember reading about some dialects even having minimal pairs distinguishing /eː/ and /ei/ even outside of recently loaned "katakana words"). It also seems like most native speakers, regardless of their actual pronunciation of the vowels, perceive there to be an underlying "i" sound, in contrast to morpheme-internal お段+う which is universally perceived as only containing the /o/ quality. Compare how the singer of this particular part of the Japanese version of One Day More breaks up the words 革命 and 学生 into beats (カ・ク・メ・イ、ガ・ク・セ・イ) with how he does it with the word どうせ (ド・オ・セ). I also remember when I had a (no longer supported) NHK pronunciation dictionary app on my phone it would consistently replace the extending ウ with the katakana length symbol ー in its phonetic transcriptions of words with お段+う, while pretty much never doing it with the イ in え段+い, only ever having え段 followed by the length symbol in "katakana words" like ケーキ.

[sfuqua]

Samoa has something similar to Japanese mora, and I always thought about it in musical terms, quarter notes (one beat) and half notes(two beats). I used this analogy to teach some beginners Samoan, and it seemed to help the ones who are used to musical notation.

Japanese sounds like it has something like this going on, but I don't know how close this is to the Samoan system.

So the name of the country is: Sa(half note)mo(quarter note)aquarter note.

[CDR]

Thank you, @Picaboo, for the link to that Google Doc, I've skimmed the parts of the transcript for the videos I already watched and will start reading properly from there!

@vonPeterhof thank you as well for further info about pronunciation, super useful!

And @sfuqua, maybe it is a bit similar!

Jan 19 2024
The emotional rollercoaster of learning a language continues. All this week, I've been thinking to myself that after Japanese and bumping up my Portuguese, I'm not learning another language. It rotates between "no more" and "no more Cat4".

Then I met with a friend today, he's Korean, he told me I shouldn't learn Korean. Now, I'm ready to learn Korean.

Did I ever mention I want to try EuroComRom? I went as far as skimming most of the book a few months ago. Just a few months of 2022 levels of study effort on my Portuguese, then start on EuroComRom...

I think it would be a fun experiment and something novel to make a log about. Even though they no longer exist, from what I've read of the book, I do not think it was because their system was bad.

Japanese
Hours of Japanese Studied : 36 / 500 Hours Completed

Eat away at your Anki Japanese Vocab Card Backlog : 1640 / 2365 Backlogged Reviews Re-Integrated

I pulled all the cards out of the backlog that were katana words, and a few kana only. That was almost 100 cards. Didn't take too long yesterday (50 minutes), but I am still trying to switch to a day shift schedule, and I am procrastinating doing the reviews for "today" (Jan 20).

Portuguese
Honestly, I barely remember what happened yesterday now. I am pretty sure I fell asleep to Big Brother Brazil again.

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Jan 20 2024

Japanese

Hours of Japanese Studied : 36 / 500 Hours Completed

I worked and was falling asleep shortly after work, I managed to squeeze out some Anki, but was mid-asleep for some of these cards, I think poor retention is going to be an issue. On reflection, now was a bad time to pull out all those cards and add them back to the deck. Next time I am switching my sleep schedule, I will leave Anki alone

I normally study before work on the day shift, but I need a few more days before my sleep schedule can handle that

Portuguese
None

[CDR]

Well, with @Golyplot's knowledge/reminder that JLPT results were released today, I went and checked now, and I will be the proud owner of another "Not Passed" N3 certificate

Language Knowledge: 22/60
Reading: 29/60
Listening: 18/60

Total Score: 69/180

I got a B in Vocab and a C in Grammar.

95 total is needed to pass, 19 minimum for each section, meaning I failed not passed the listening section as well!

Comparing with last year, it's a bit of a mixed bag, I passed Language Knowledge this time, but failed Listening this time. Overall a better score, and I failed "less" than last time, so, somehow I improved... or got lucky!