Crawling to a brutal JLPT beating in December 2023

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lavengro
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x 1994

Re: Crawling to a brutal JLPT beating in December 2023

Postby lavengro » Sat Jun 03, 2023 4:31 am

I went streets ahead over the last couple of weeks and pulled a male version of an Annie and blew off all interactions with language, both any Japanese study (I get discouraged so easily) and as much as possible English usage (I get all solitary from time to time), in favour of my original language when a tiny thing, gibberish: “Bli, bli, bla, bla, blaaaahhh.”



Back at Japanese learning now a minimum of eights days a week, both autodidactically and occasionally with Professor Professorson.

6 x
This signature space now on loan to the mysterious and enigmatic Breakmaster Cylinder:
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lavengro
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Location: Hiding in Vancouver. Tell no one.
Languages: English - finally getting a handle on this beast of a language. Also tinkering with a few other languages intermittently.
x 1994

Re: Crawling to a brutal JLPT beating in December 2023

Postby lavengro » Sat Jun 10, 2023 5:18 am

Summary of last week’s bold efforts:

Genki 1 – working on chapter 2 (kinda dragged my butt in getting back to the textbook)
Bunpro (Genki 1): chapter 2, now completed 9 units (of a total of 13)
Bunpro (N5 grammar) level 2, now completed 8 units of 12 units
Bunpro (N5 vocabulary): now completed 96 vocab items (of a total of 1100 words)
Pimsleur: Level 1, units 9 (review), 10 (twice), 11
Mango: Unit 1, chapter 3, lessons 4, 5, 6, 7
Wanikani: finally finished level 8 (after taking an extended siesta there for 39 days), now working on level 9
Memrise (N5 vocabulary and kanji): level 4 (of a total of 75 levels)
Wordle scores: 5, 2 (some luck involved), 5, 5, 2 (a lot of amazing skill involved), 5, 3

Media: Eden – four episode anime, loved it, agreed with the main character’s despair (“Why am I a human?”) and the general sentiment of the others: (“We have judged humans to be harmful and the downfall of earth”).


3 x
This signature space now on loan to the mysterious and enigmatic Breakmaster Cylinder:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUGKldkiex4

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lavengro
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x 1994

Re: Crawling to a brutal JLPT beating in December 2023

Postby lavengro » Sat Jun 10, 2023 3:34 pm

Prefecture #3 - Akita

South of Aomori prefecture, bordering the Sea of Japan to its west, in the Tohoku region in the northern part of the island of Honshuu.

Pretend arrived too early for the summer Kanto Matsuri festival. Too bad, it looks like it would have been grand: 46 paper lanterns with lit candles carried on long bamboo poles, held in the capital city of Akita.

Image

Fictitiously arrived too late for the winter Kamakura Festival in Yokote, a little south of Akita.

Image

Akita prefecture is probably a bad place to be if you are a candle instead of a human – good chance yer gonna get lit up and burned down at some point during the year.
5 x
This signature space now on loan to the mysterious and enigmatic Breakmaster Cylinder:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUGKldkiex4

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lavengro
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Joined: Wed May 24, 2017 1:39 am
Location: Hiding in Vancouver. Tell no one.
Languages: English - finally getting a handle on this beast of a language. Also tinkering with a few other languages intermittently.
x 1994

Re: Crawling to a brutal JLPT beating in December 2023

Postby lavengro » Sat Jun 17, 2023 4:16 am

Summary of last week's dispirited non-efforts:

A little Wanikani, a little Genki, one Pimsleur lesson but mostly nothing. It just all seemed like too much to deal with. No prefecture pretend visit - it just seems so far away. At work, my boss said that my work efforts were, and I quote, "half-assed at best."

I will try to do better next week with Japanese. Or not, I don't know at this point. At work, on the other hand, I am committed to being fully-assed in the future.

I did manage this past week to get to the bar (there are after all some non-negotiable social priorities), but mostly just because I needed assistance in dealing with some vermin:

4 x
This signature space now on loan to the mysterious and enigmatic Breakmaster Cylinder:
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golyplot
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x 3385

Re: Crawling to a brutal JLPT beating in December 2023

Postby golyplot » Sat Jun 17, 2023 6:01 am

It's an interesting coincidence that the actress is named Uma, which also means "horse" in Japanese.
4 x

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lavengro
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Location: Hiding in Vancouver. Tell no one.
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x 1994

Re: Crawling to a brutal JLPT beating in December 2023

Postby lavengro » Sat Jun 17, 2023 8:52 pm

golyplot wrote:It's an interesting coincidence that the actress is named Uma, which also means "horse" in Japanese.

Would be even cooler if うま was the reading for either "Black Mamba" or "(The) Bride."

I looked up Uma Thurman's background after reading your post to see what the source of her first name might have been. According to Wikipedia (so it must be true): born in Boston to her father Robert Thurman who was a professor of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Studies who lived as an ordained Buddhist monk for three years and her mother, Nena von Schlebrügge, a high-fashion model, was born in Mexico City to a German nobleman and a Swedish model Birgit Holmquist. She received a Buddhist upbringing, and spent time in a town in the Northern-Indian state of Uttarakhand. According to Quentin Tarantino (so it must not be true), she is wicked good with a sword and killed at least 87 yakuza in addition to other assorted scoundrels who sorely deserved it.

Still not sure where "Uma" comes from, but her middle name ("Karuna") has a number of interesting sources, including Sanskrit.
5 x
This signature space now on loan to the mysterious and enigmatic Breakmaster Cylinder:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUGKldkiex4

User avatar
lavengro
Blue Belt
Posts: 728
Joined: Wed May 24, 2017 1:39 am
Location: Hiding in Vancouver. Tell no one.
Languages: English - finally getting a handle on this beast of a language. Also tinkering with a few other languages intermittently.
x 1994

Re: Crawling to a brutal JLPT beating in December 2023

Postby lavengro » Sat Jul 01, 2023 2:11 pm

I have been floundering with Japanese. Part of this is because I had a very difficult time when I tried explaining to my work colleagues, to my manager and to her director that I needed to dial back my oppressive work obligations so that I could have time to study properly for the JPLT N5 test. It was difficult because they kept saying things like “I don’t care and am not interested” and “please stop talking and just get back to work” and “for the love of Murphy, I already politely asked you to stop talking, now I am begging and next comes firing.”

Naturally, I am disappointed. But I have come up with an elegant and foolproof solution: add French into the mix. I am not sure how that will help exactly; I am just sure it will.

I figure that I was once - a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away – at a low, low intermediate level in French, pre-rustification. I took a mini placement assessment a few days ago (https://apprendre.tv5monde.com/fr/apprendre-francais/tester-son-niveau) and it classified me as A2. That’s okay, I am planning in any event on going back right to the basics and get a tremendous head of steam and momentum going. Trying for two hours of Japanese and one hour of French per day, five days a week, starting right… right… now!

French C1 equivalency in five years of modest regular near-daily study? Sure, why not. And by that time, surely all will be forgiven and hopefully the official ban on me returning to France will be lifted and I will be able to go back for another visit. And maybe – or maybe not – do that thing that I did on my last visit that got me in so much trouble? Sure, why not. But this time doing it while screaming loudly and maniacally in passable French instead of loudly and maniacally in English like last time.
6 x
This signature space now on loan to the mysterious and enigmatic Breakmaster Cylinder:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUGKldkiex4


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