Japanese and Mandarin in 50 years, with a lot of detours.

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David27
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Languages: English (N)
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Abandoned languages (for now) :( Greek, Czech, Bengali, Arabic, Norwegian
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Re: Japanese and Mandarin in 50 years, with a lot of detours.

Postby David27 » Thu Oct 27, 2022 2:54 am

MorkTheFiddle wrote:[ An interesting observation. Almost a psychological effect of 'no way out.'


My brain prefers to take the easy way out, even though I enjoy speaking a foreign language and learning languages. I’m going to work on being more self-confident when speaking in those situations.
1 x

David27
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Re: Japanese and Mandarin in 50 years, with a lot of detours.

Postby David27 » Tue Nov 01, 2022 2:01 am

October update:

I thought that October should be a better month... but I was wrong. The upcoming lecture I'm doing, despite being on a topic I know well, is still taking up a lot of my spare time, just making sure I have something of quality that is well sourced and updated. So my hours are down again, and I'm assuming they may be through the end of the year at this point. I don't want to push myself too much for daily goals, just continue steady learning.

I met up with my Russian-speaking friends again on Saturday. And again, speaking Russian just felt a bit awkward. I think it's because I sense that they would prefer to just speak English with me, as it would be easier for everyone, and my social instincts say it is polite to take the path of least resistance. That being said, since their daughter only speaks Russian... plenty for practice there and the conversation around her with my friends is in Russian too. Plus we watched a bit of Винни Пух, which was an interesting take of Winnie the Pooh.

For Chinese and Japanese practice, it is quite slim, but not absolutely 0 like it used to be. In the area where we live, we met a couple where the wife is from China, and she will actually speak bits of Mandarin with me and is happy to do so. It doesn't happen for long or anything significant, but even basic conversational practice 'in the wild' is nice. There is also a large Japanese population in this town. My neighbors are Japanese, and I've been meeting a lot more Japanese people in the area (through activities my daughter does). So far, I haven't really gotten past niceties and greetings in English, so I haven't even felt comfortable enough to bother them with my Japanese (besides my neighbors, but again they just kind of smile and give a short response, so I don't speak much Japanese for fear of being annoying to them).

German I also kept in my study routine, listening to EasyGerman podcasts and reading some German short stories by Rilke

October 2022 hours:
Japanese: 8 hours, 20 minutes
Spanish: 8 hours, 0 minutes
Mandarin: 6 hours, 40 minutes
Russian: 4 hours, 10 minutes
German: 4 hours, 0 minutes
Ukrainian: 1 hour, 10 minutes
French: 50 minutes
Polish: 45 minutes
Portuguese: 45 minutes
Italian: 40 minutes
Dutch: 35 minutes
Latin: 25 minutes

2022 running total
Japanese: 100 hours, 30 minutes
Mandarin: 97 hours, 10 minutes
Spanish: 64 hours, 30 minutes
Russian: 51 hours, 0 minutes
German: 48 hours, 0 minutes
Italian: 27 hours, 40 minutes
Ukrainian: 15 hours, 40 minutes
Dutch: 9 hours, 20 minutes
French: 9 hours, 10 minutes
Latin: 8 hours, 55 minutes
Polish: 7 hours, 15 minutes
Portuguese: 6 hours, 35 minutes
Albanian: 2 hours, 15 minutes
6 x

David27
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Languages: English (N)
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Abandoned languages (for now) :( Greek, Czech, Bengali, Arabic, Norwegian
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Re: Japanese and Mandarin in 50 years, with a lot of detours.

Postby David27 » Fri Nov 11, 2022 2:41 am

Monday at work was a good diverse day language wise. About half the day in Spanish I had to use a Bengli interpreter, one visit in Russian and one on French. It’s very atypical for me to have that much diversity (French very rare for me to encounter these days, in this case from a Haitian woman).
5 x

David27
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Languages: English (N)
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Abandoned languages (for now) :( Greek, Czech, Bengali, Arabic, Norwegian
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Re: Japanese and Mandarin in 50 years, with a lot of detours.

Postby David27 » Sun Jan 01, 2023 7:36 pm

2022 Recap

Next post I'll lay out plans (hopes) for 2023

It was a bad end of the year for me, I had a lot of work commitments that ate up my evenings and nights, and then once that was gone... the world cup dropped, and I love soccer... so naturally that ate into my language study. But I still kept up my habits to some extent, trying to read and at minimum listen to podcasts while commuting or exercising to keep in touch with my language study.



November-December hours:
Chinese: 15 hours, 5 minutes
Japanese: 13 hours, 50 minutes
Spanish: 12 hours, 15 minutes
German: 8 hours, 15 minutes
Russian: 4 hours, 0 minutes
Ukrainian: 3 hours, 45 minutes
Portuguese: 1 hour, 55 minutes
French: 1 hour, 15 minutes
Dutch: 1 hour, 15 minutes
Latin: 1 hour, 0 minutes
Italian: 45 minutes
Polish: 10 minutes

2022 Final: total
Japanese: 114 hours, 20 minutes
Mandarin: 112 hours, 15 minutes
Spanish: 76 hours, 45 minutes
German: 56 hours, 15 minutes
Russian: 55 hours, 0 minutes
Italian: 28 hours, 25 minutes
Ukrainian: 19 hours, 25 minutes
Dutch: 10 hours, 35 minutes
French: 10 hours, 25 minutes
Latin: 9 hours, 55 minutes
Portuguese: 8 hours, 30 minutes
Polish: 7 hours, 25 minutes
Albanian: 2 hours, 15 minutes

2023 Total: 511 hours, 30 minutes
2022 Total: 525 Hours, 0 minutes.
2021 Total: 600 Hours, 15 minutes
5 x

David27
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Languages: English (N)
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Re: Japanese and Mandarin in 50 years, with a lot of detours.

Postby David27 » Sun Jan 01, 2023 8:12 pm

2023 Goals
This won't be exciting, as I don't have many new goals, but I wish to refocus my study.

Mandarin/Japanese: Last year, I read wo jia de da yan fei zou le, which is ~500 Chinese vocabulary book, but 40-50 pages of only Chinese text which was good for me. It also comes with a CD which I listened to for audio practice. I thought it was great practice, so I bought two more similar books at the same level. For Japanese since I liked it, I got a japanese graded reader series, 5 short stories for vocabulary level 400-1500 with audio, which I found too easy and the books had too many pictures, and a lot less text than the Chinese, so not as good practice, but I think useful for getting used to sitting down and reading Japanese. I got 2 more at the next level, which is 1500+ vocabulary, so we'll see how that goes.

Overall, my plan is the same as I have been doing, 20 minutes each as a goal, but I'm not religious about it, if I get busy and miss a day I don't sweat it, I'm not in too much of a hurry.

Slavic: next as far as time investment is probably Slavic languages. I didn't read anything last year in Russian, but still listened to Russian with Max podcast and would read different Russian news sources. I also started Ukrainian, and completed Pimsleur Ukrainian I, 30 lessons. I have Teach Yourself Ukrainian which I went through the first 4 lessons so far. I had started learning Polish 2-3 times before, In the past I've done Pimsleur level I twice, and the first 20 lessons of Assimil le polonais sans peine in the past, which I tried again last year... and got just about as far as I did last time (~20 lessons). I do follow different content creators on Twitter who post exclusively in Polish, so I do have some Polish reading. My interest in Polish always goes up the more Ukrainian I study to see the Slavic family differences between these 3 languages.

Germanic: In November-December, I watched Deutschland 83 TV show which I liked, I also read Kafka-Rilke Dual Language book of short stories (111 pages of German reading). I needed English translation of the dual-language book, as a lot of the short stories were tough to understand even reading in English (particularly some of the Kafka stories). Dutch, I haven't done much recently, just watching Easy Dutch videos on Youtube when they're posted. My goal to try a book in Dutch flopped, too much to do and I de-prioritized that. I am surprised with how much German I ended up doing last year, hopefully I will keep up a similar pace, as I enjoy the language.

Romance: No major updates. For next year I plan to refocus my first 3 months of next year on Italian, dabble in Latin, then after that maybe I'll back off romance language study. Spanish I use daily and am always looking things up or small ways to better my Spanish, so I don't feel the need to prioritize that.

Other: outside of language learning, I plan on improving my reading. My goal is to read at least one page daily (English or foreign language, so my graded readers for Chinese/Japanese will count), even if busy, I can sit down and read one page. I love reading, but getting busy and with so much going on in life I have often pushed off reading to just when on vacation, or have a long weekend, I want to have it be a more routine part of my life again. As far as exercise, last year I started running a lot more, so I plan on keeping that up, and I would like to do 2-3 5K races (I did one last summer and enjoyed it).
12 x

David27
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Languages: English (N)
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Re: Japanese and Mandarin in 50 years, with a lot of detours.

Postby David27 » Wed Feb 01, 2023 3:51 am

January is off to a good start, and I've also made some new resolutions/set clearer goals for what I would like to accomplish with language learning this year. I really would like to polish up my Italian and Portuguese. Of the Romance languages I have let these go a bit idle, which is a shame since I really love them both. Spanish I use all the time, and I feel ok with my French, so I'll mainly focus on these 2 as far as Romance language. Since my main focus will still be Japanese and Chinese, I won't have time to focus on both at once, but what I'll do is divide up the year, picking a secondary language as a 'focus language' out of my more neglected or weaker languages to try to build it up a bit, at least until my interest shifts to wanting to put that time/effort elsewhere.

Japanese and Chinese I was consistent in getting 20 minutes average per day. I was sick a few days and studied 0 minutes several days, but other days doing more made it even out in the end. Still working through Genki book II, listening to podcasts for Japanese. Mostly doing DeFrancis Chinese Reader, but also some simple short stories reading in Chinese, some Chinese podcast listening, and then some of the LingQ mini stories reviewing (stories 10-20).

As an aside, when I went to drop off my dry cleaning, I thought maybe I would try out my Mandarin, since I saw a sign in the store in Chinese about a Chinese New Year event, as well as a Shen Yun poster (albeit, they advertise everywhere). So with the Chinese poster, on the bulletin board, I thought maybe they were Chinese, and they always are very friendly, so maybe they would appreciate it, or at least be amused. But as I walked up to the counter, I hear the radio in the back... definitely Korean, I see a Korean newspaper folded up too... so while I avoided making a fool of myself, the worked up courage to engage in Mandarin was all for naught. It reminds me of a time I asked a waiter at a Chinese restaurant in Manhattan, 可以中文点菜吗 (or something simple to that effect), and they guy just told me he was Vietnamese.

Mandarin: 10 hours, 20 minutes
Japanese: 10 hours, 20 minutes
Italian: 6 hours, 50 minutes
Spanish: 6 hours, 0 minutes
German: 4 hours, 5 minutes
Russian: 3 hours, 20 minutes
Polish: 1 hour, 20 minutes
Ukrainian: 1 hour, 10 minutes
French: 1 hour, 5 minutes
Portuguese: 1 hour, 0 minutes
Dutch: 45 minutes
Latin: 40 minutes
9 x

David27
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Posts: 279
Joined: Thu Apr 13, 2017 8:52 pm
Languages: English (N)
French, Spanish (advanced)
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Mandarin, Japanese, Dutch (low-intermediate)
Latin, Polish: (beginner)
Abandoned languages (for now) :( Greek, Czech, Bengali, Arabic, Norwegian
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Re: Japanese and Mandarin in 50 years, with a lot of detours.

Postby David27 » Thu Feb 16, 2023 8:23 pm

The wonderful news update is that last week, my second child was born and mom and baby have been healthy. Now with a 2 year old and a newborn, things are busy, but I took a bit of family leave and vacation to have a few weeks off now to help at home, and in the summer when my wife goes back to work I’ll take a few months time off as well to help her transition back to work go smoothly.

This means I’m up trying to quiet the baby at odd hours of the night, but I use some of that time for language podcasts to help keep me awake. I also had a eureka type moment before taking a nap this afternoon, where my thoughts went to Japanese and I was able to smoothly think and imagine full conversations in Japanese. I felt good about this, so I just turned in 47 Ronin… and understand nothing lol. Perhaps it’s because it’s a period piece and the levels if formality and type of speech is so different. But really besides understanding individual words, I’m not getting any real comprehension and having to rely on subtitles.

The last 2 nights before going to bed, I watched 400 coups, an older French movie and enjoyed that.

Addendum: I couldn’t watch more than 30 minutes of 47 Ronin, I couldn’t follow the Japanese, and the story crawled at a snails pace and was hard to follow even with subtitles. I’ll have to look for better recommendations for Japanese movies for someone at entry level to Japanese film/art/culture, or stick to the plethora of other foreign movies on this HBOmax account.
12 x

golyplot
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Re: Japanese and Mandarin in 50 years, with a lot of detours.

Postby golyplot » Fri Feb 17, 2023 3:15 am

It's completely different than what you asked for, but if you're looking for things to watch that might be friendlier to a Japanese learner, I'd personally recommend this series of gaming videos, which I found to be entertaining and relatively easy to understand.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Utt7X6 ... ar4GwrBikv
1 x

David27
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Posts: 279
Joined: Thu Apr 13, 2017 8:52 pm
Languages: English (N)
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Latin, Polish: (beginner)
Abandoned languages (for now) :( Greek, Czech, Bengali, Arabic, Norwegian
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Re: Japanese and Mandarin in 50 years, with a lot of detours.

Postby David27 » Sat Feb 18, 2023 12:59 am

golyplot wrote:It's completely different than what you asked for, but if you're looking for things to watch that might be friendlier to a Japanese learner, I'd personally recommend this series of gaming videos, which I found to be entertaining and relatively easy to understand.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Utt7X6 ... ar4GwrBikv


Thank you for the suggestion. Honestly I was looking for something with cultural relevance, but this is probably better comprehensible input for my Japanese. I’ll check it out! Maybe watch some of his Yakuza play through
1 x

David27
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Posts: 279
Joined: Thu Apr 13, 2017 8:52 pm
Languages: English (N)
French, Spanish (advanced)
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Latin, Polish: (beginner)
Abandoned languages (for now) :( Greek, Czech, Bengali, Arabic, Norwegian
x 987

Re: Japanese and Mandarin in 50 years, with a lot of detours.

Postby David27 » Wed Mar 01, 2023 2:56 am

February Update:

Outside of my typical Japanese/Mandarin studies, I've continued focusing on Italian, reading my Italian Copy of Lord of the Rings (the Hobbits are almost to Weathertop with Strider), and listening to podcasts. I also watched most of the Movie 8 1/2, which is odd and a bit overly artsy for my usual taste... but I didn't hate it (though I didn't finish the last 20-30 minutes). I also played around with Chat GPT and Quazel, but I chose to use AI chat to brush up on my active French skills a bit.

Japanese/Mandarin: I maintained my goal of averaging 20 minutes/day in both. For Japanese this month, my textbook study focused a lot on honorific and humble verbs, a weak spot in my learning so far so I spent a bit of time reviewing that and the exercises. I don't expect to master it, but I want to be very familiar with the forms to recognize and understand it. I did a lot of listening to podcasts/youtube. For Mandarin, I'm still working through the John DeFrancis book to boost my knowledge of traditional characters, and I pair that with podcasts/youtube as well. I haven't done any reading in my Guided readers.

For next month, I plan to continue Italian alongside Japanese/Mandarin, though maybe not with the same level of dedication as I had in February. By April, I'll probably phase out my Italian to put more time into Russian. In May I'm going on a weekend trip with some Russian speaking friends, so I will want to be sharp and comfortable with my Russian.

February hours
Japanese: 9 hours, 50 minutes
Chinese: 9 hours, 30 minutes
Italian: 9 hours, 0 minutes
Spanish: 4 hours, 5 minutes
French: 2 hours, 25 minutes
Russian: 2 hours, 15 minutes
German: 1 hour, 45 minutes
Dutch: 1 hour, 0 minutes
Ukrainian: 1 hour, 0 minutes
Latin: 50 minutes
Polish: 40 minutes
Portuguese: 35 minutes

2023 hours
Japanese: 20 hours, 10 minutes
Mandarin: 19 hours, 50 minutes
Italian: 15 hours, 50 minutes
Spanish: 10 hours, 5 minutes
German: 5 hours, 50 minutes
Russian: 5 hours, 35 minutes
French: 3 hours, 30 minutes
Ukrainian: 2 hours, 10 minutes
Polish: 2 hours, 0 minutes
Dutch: 1 hour, 45 minutes
Portuguese: 1 hour, 35 minutes
Latin: 1 hour, 30 minutes
11 x


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