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

Continue or start your personal language log here, including logs for challenge participants
Online
David27
Green Belt
Posts: 279
Joined: Thu Apr 13, 2017 8:52 pm
Languages: English (N)
French, Spanish (advanced)
Russian, Portuguese, Italian, German (proficient)
Mandarin, Japanese, Dutch (low-intermediate)
Latin, Polish: (beginner)
Abandoned languages (for now) :( Greek, Czech, Bengali, Arabic, Norwegian
x 987

Re: My language log

Postby David27 » Thu Aug 01, 2019 2:42 am

No major updates from my last post, but other Russian podcasts I have been listening too this past week are short stories on Чтение, and I started listening to Эхо Москвы instead of Sputnik recently. I like my Bengali online textbook, but I find it less motivating to use it instead of a physical book... but I'll try to put more effort into it next month.... がんばります! French got a good boost from me feeling festive around Bastille day, visiting a French friend, and listening to some of the episodes that interested me from the past several months on "Grand bien vous fasse".

I also just want to say what a gold mine the LingQ library is. There are so many great texts with audio for all levels in all languages that I'm studying. I don't use it enough because I don't like just sitting in front of my computer for too much, but I am using it 2-3 days a week for one language or another. Mandarin had the University of Iowa beginner reader with what seems like over 100 good advanced beginner lessons. That alone would be great, but there's a lot of other great materials. Italian I just finished a short series about Napoleon's war with Russia (a translation from a series originally in Russian). It also has plenty of audiobooks. Also good short beginner lessons in Dutch and Polish that I've used last month. It's a good place when I have 10-15 minutes on my computer and want to do a quick lesson. Now if only they had Bengali... Again with Bengali being largely ignored for being one of the top 10 most spoken languages in the world. LingQ doesn't have Hindi either though, but Gujarati is listed as a beta language??? I'm happy that Gujarati is in development for those interested, I'm just surprised that it is there prior to Hindi/Urdu.

July Hours:
Russian: 15 hours, 40 minutes
Japanese: 13 hours, 40 minutes
Mandarin: 10 hours, 0 minutes
French: 5 hours, 40 minutes
Portuguese: 4 hours, 0 minutes
Spanish: 3 hours, 15 minutes
German: 2 hours, 35 minutes
Dutch: 2 hours, 35 minutes
Polish: 2 hours, 5 minutes
Italian: 1 hour, 35 minutes
Bengali: 1 hour, 0 minutes

Running 2019 total:
Japanese: 88 hours, 15 minutes
Spanish: 69 hours, 5 minutes
Russian: 63 hours, 30 minutes
Mandarin: 56 hours, 30 minutes
French: 19 hours, 40 minutes
Portuguese: 11 hours, 15 minutes
German: 11 hours, 10 minutes
Italian: 8 hours, 15 minutes
Dutch: 7 hours, 50 minutes
Polish: 5 hours, 35 minutes
Bengali: 5 hours, 0 minutes
5 x

Online
David27
Green Belt
Posts: 279
Joined: Thu Apr 13, 2017 8:52 pm
Languages: English (N)
French, Spanish (advanced)
Russian, Portuguese, Italian, German (proficient)
Mandarin, Japanese, Dutch (low-intermediate)
Latin, Polish: (beginner)
Abandoned languages (for now) :( Greek, Czech, Bengali, Arabic, Norwegian
x 987

Re: My language log

Postby David27 » Mon Aug 19, 2019 9:45 pm

Recently for Bengali I’ve gotten to a really boring but essential part of beginning stage: memorizing numbers, days of the week, months of the year, etc. it’s essential information to know, just takes repetition, but is dreadfully boring. I’ve got the days down and 1-10 down (lol a mere 17 words, but I’m patting myself on the back anyway... don’t judge me!). I still haven’t sat down and taught myself the eastern nagari (Bengali-Assamese)script, but that will be another challenge (albeit Im looking forward to that a bit more). Honestly I’m also having more fun learning Hanzi and Kanji and comparing them still, because I know my radicals, am past just rote memorization and able to read stuff written for beginners (completely lost with anything written for fluent speakers). Since that is more fun, I’m doing more of it.

Also listening to podcasts by echo Moskvi, chtenie,, grand bien vous fasse, and some cafe Brasil. I haven’t been doing any reading this month. I sat out the last two months of the book club, thinking I would do some other reading, but just filled that stuff with work, podcasts and other learning. I should get back to sitting down with a book. I’ll read petit pays if that wins for next month, it’s been on my to read list anyway so it would give me an excuse to read it.
4 x

Online
David27
Green Belt
Posts: 279
Joined: Thu Apr 13, 2017 8:52 pm
Languages: English (N)
French, Spanish (advanced)
Russian, Portuguese, Italian, German (proficient)
Mandarin, Japanese, Dutch (low-intermediate)
Latin, Polish: (beginner)
Abandoned languages (for now) :( Greek, Czech, Bengali, Arabic, Norwegian
x 987

Re: My language log

Postby David27 » Sun Sep 01, 2019 3:12 am

In the past 2-3 weeks, I’ve been in a bit of a funk, partly due to feeling dissatisfied with work (disappointed with superiors, the system, feeling a sense of futility in some research with tons of paperwork that I don’t think will get anywhere)… I won’t bore you with any more details than that. Due to that, when I want to relax I have been wanting to turn my brain off and do something mindless sometimes. I’ve been exercising more and that’s helped clear my mind and lift my spirits. I also play in a weekly soccer league and have been following the English Premier League.

That being said, I still did a decent amount of language study. I just cut out Italian, German, Polish, Dutch, in the past 3 weeks, and in the last 2 weeks also dropped Bengali, so I could focus on Japanese, Mandarin, and Russian. I listen to French podcasts now and then (grand bien vous fasse), did some French reading, and still using plenty of Spanish at work. Of course these cuts are just temporary, I’m not dropping any of these languages, just temporarily de-prioritized in order to keep my momentum going in other languages.

For Russian, same as last month, эхо москвы, чтение podcasts, reading the news in Russian.

Ironically even though I cut down on language study time and narrowed my focus, I had a strong urge for the past 2 weeks to pick up Arabic again… where I left off is still in the absolute beginner territory, so it would be silly, but I’ve been reading and listening to a lot of current events in the middle east in Russian, and I would like to hear a more local point of view in Arabic (until then, I just occasionally read Al-Jazeera, Haaretz, and Kurdistan24 in English).

A lot of my focus in the last month for both Mandarin and Japanese is Kanji/Hanzi, and comparing the differences in them. I have a long way to go before I'll be able to do any true reading of native sources, which is where I'd like to get someday. I read elsewhere here about a learner considering leaving his/her Japanese where it is and studying other languages, or put in the effort to push for the ability to be literate in Japanese. For me, I'll never be able to say I'm not trying to learn to read... even if I completely change focus, only put a few hours into Japanese a month while I work on other language forays, I'll still be trying to go for that goal in the longterm (decades longterm???). I've made the commitment to Japanese and Mandarin, and they are a part of my life now. Of the list below, Dutch, Polish, and Bengali are the only ones that could be at risk of disappearing, the rest I've invested too much of myself into at one point or another in my life.

August Hours:
Russian: 12 hours, 0 minutes
Japanese: 10 hours, 50 minutes
Mandarin: 10 hours 40 minutes
French: 5 hours, 25 minutes
Spanish: 4 hours, 20 minutes
Bengali: 1 hour, 30 minutes
Portuguese: 1 hour, 25 minutes
Polish: 55 minutes
Dutch: 45 minutes
Italian: 35 minutes
German: 5 minutes

Running 2019 total:
Japanese: 99 hours, 5 minutes
Russian: 75 hours, 30 minutes
Spanish: 73 hours, 25 minutes
Mandarin: 67 hours, 10 minutes
French: 25 hours, 5 minutes
Portuguese: 12 hours, 40 minutes
German: 11 hours, 15 minutes
Italian: 8 hours, 40 minutes
Dutch: 8 hours, 35 minutes
Polish: 6 hours, 30 minutes
Bengali: 6 hours, 30 minutes

A clear divide for this year is forming: Languages I'm taking more seriously: Japanese, Russian, Spanish, Mandarin
Limbo: French
Light maintenance/dabbling: Portuguese, German, Italian, Dutch, Polish, Bengali
3 x

Online
David27
Green Belt
Posts: 279
Joined: Thu Apr 13, 2017 8:52 pm
Languages: English (N)
French, Spanish (advanced)
Russian, Portuguese, Italian, German (proficient)
Mandarin, Japanese, Dutch (low-intermediate)
Latin, Polish: (beginner)
Abandoned languages (for now) :( Greek, Czech, Bengali, Arabic, Norwegian
x 987

Re: My language log

Postby David27 » Tue Oct 01, 2019 2:18 am

September was a bad month for me language learning wise. I gave an hour long grand rounds talk for my program, and put a lot of research and time into it which occupied most of my evenings (it was last Thursday). So language time suffered. My Mandarin and Japanese was mostly listening, but I did go over some hanzi and spent some time trying to iron out my knowledge of the Japanese conditional.

I haven’t done any Arabic (I briefly gave into that urge at the beginning of the month, just reviewed some material for several days that I had covered before. Before reviewing it I wouldn't have remembered almost any of it, but it all came back so quickly upon reviewing, so not all is wasted in these short 'language flings' that I go on, Bengali, or Polish since the first week of the month. I also did very little language maintenance, and didn’t pick up my Dutch book once. I’m ok with all of that.

A Russian-speaking friend of mine is coming back to NY in November, and with a group of friends we’re going to take a weekend trip. He currently lives in Prague, and any excuse is a good excuse to pick up some bits of a language. He told me last time I saw him he can get by in some Czech, so I'd like to see how far I can get to see what kind of communication we can have in Czech. I bought a Colloquial Czech book on sale for 10 dollars years ago but never touched it, so today I did 30 minutes working out the pronunciation and alphabet (audio to the colloquial series free online on their website). Even though theoretically (aka logically in my head) I prefer to learn Polish over Czech, I haven’t had too much motivation to push myself to study Polish, and now I have a reason to pick up my Czech course… lets see how far in it I get. When all the European polyglot gathering crowd is dropping their casual Slovak and trying to pick up some basic Polish for next year, I’m currently dialing down my Polish and going for Czech… I'll likely be back for more Polish though later this year.

For Russian, mostly listening to podcasts. I spent time with my Russian-speaking friends (mostly my former roommate but saw some of the others in the group too) about once a week and went to a Russian баня and restaurant here in New York. Even though we generally speak English, we still throw in some Russian here and there, and the context of being around them helps keep me motivated to keep up to date with Russian news/movies/music and trying to push myself to be better.

My French time is just reading petit pays. For the book club. I wrote my review for that there earlier today.

September hours:
Japanese: 8 hours, 25 minutes
Mandarin: 7 hours, 40 minutes
Russian: 6 hours, 20 minutes
French: 5 hours, 45 minutes
Spanish: 2 hours, 5 minutes
Arabic: 1 hour, 20 minutes
German: 1 hour, 0 minutes
Portuguese: 1 hour, 0 minutes
Czech: 30 minutes
Polish: 10 minutes
Italian: 5 minutes

Running 2019 total:
Japanese: 107 hours, 30 minutes
Russian: 81 hours, 50 minutes
Spanish: 75 hours, 30 minutes
Mandarin: 74 hours, 50 minutes
French: 30 hours, 50 minutes
Portuguese: 13 hours, 40 minutes
German: 12 hours, 15 minutes
Italian: 8 hours, 45 minutes
Dutch: 8 hours, 35 minutes
Polish: 6 hours, 40 minutes
Bengali: 6 hours, 30 minutes
Arabic: 1 hour, 20 minutes
Czech: 30 minutes
6 x

Online
David27
Green Belt
Posts: 279
Joined: Thu Apr 13, 2017 8:52 pm
Languages: English (N)
French, Spanish (advanced)
Russian, Portuguese, Italian, German (proficient)
Mandarin, Japanese, Dutch (low-intermediate)
Latin, Polish: (beginner)
Abandoned languages (for now) :( Greek, Czech, Bengali, Arabic, Norwegian
x 987

Re: My language log

Postby David27 » Sun Dec 01, 2019 4:16 am

I fell a month behind on updates due to life, work etc... but I still have been studying. As far as language distractions go, I enjoyed spending some time with Czech, but moving forward I plan on leaving Czech on the back-burner, and for now (try) to just focus on Russian and Polish. We'll see how that goes. I also haven't spent any time on Bengali in over a month now, due to having trouble studying only with an old coursebook that I load on my cellphone. I however asked for Colloquial Bengali for Christmas, hoping that will help push me to keep it up. However, in it's place, I've been working on Arabic. I'm getting ok (still not great) at using the arabic alphabet, which I am learning with different online resources, and doing Pimsleur's Eastern Arabic course. I justify this to myself because Arabic's influence is so widespread, as I study other languages some arabic studying is bound to be useful. Plus of all writing systems, I've always found arabic to be the most beautiful. I had attempted to learn it in ~2010 but only learned the appearance of the letters standing alone (not how they're connected in cursive), and didn't take it any further.

So all of this did take a bit of time away from Mandarin and Japanese, but I'm still really enjoying my Mandarin and Japanese studies, and so these still by far take up the principle chunk of my study time. Everything else is just fun side flings.

Russian got a major boost from spending a lot of time with my Russian friends, so I've been just listening to a lot of Russian music, speaking more Russian, and listening to Russian news... along with some reading (maybe 5-10% of that time reading). German also faired very well, as I watched Babylon Berlin again (may have started in September, I don't remember exactly). Today I watched the first episode of Dark on Netflix, which could be my next foreign language series. Episode 1 had some real promise.

For our next vacation (first 2 weeks of March), we are planning a relaxing-beach type of vacation. My wife suggested Thailand or Bali (with a stop in Singapore for me), but even though I'm sure they're beautiful... it seemed like a massive undertaking and wasteful to fly half way around the world to hang out at a resort, so my preference is to do something in Florida or the Caribbean at the furthest... and I can get some good quality study and reading time in :). If I am overruled... then I guess I'll have to brush up on some Thai or Indonesian. Honestly Indonesian has never interested me too much as it's a simplified languages created to be a national language... and from what I hear it's not anyones native language (I am ignorant of the situation, so all this is second hand). I'm not sure why I've never had an interest in Thailand or Thai, I just have more interest in Eastern Asian languages, Vietnamese, languages of the Indian subcontinent and pretty much all Asian languages West of India as well :lol:

Anyway, due to Earthquakes and Dengue in Bali, and my aversion to the Thai tourist industry, I think I'll end up winning and I won't be picking up any further languages in the coming month (further out than that I can't promise).

October-November hours: 
Russian: 20 hours, 10 minutes
Japanese: 18 hours, 25 minutes
Mandarin: 15 hours, 30 minutes
Spanish: 10 hours, 0 minutes
German: 8 hours, 45 minutes
Arabic: 3 hours, 35 minutes
Italian: 2 hours, 30 minutes
Czech: 1 hour, 40 minutes
French: 1 hour, 10 minutes
Portuguese: 1 hour, 10 minutes
Dutch: 1 hour, 5 minutes
Polish: 1 hour, 0 minutes
Bengali: 30 minutes

Running 2019 total:
Japanese: 125 hours, 55 minutes
Russian: 102 hours, 0 minutes
Mandarin: 90 hours, 20 minutes
Spanish:  85 hours, 30 minutes
French: 32 hours, 0 minutes
German: 21 hours, 0 minutes
Portuguese: 14 hours, 50 minutes
Italian: 11 hours, 15 minutes
Dutch: 9 hours, 40 minutes
Polish: 7 hours, 40 minutes
Bengali: 7 hours, 0 minutes
Arabic: 4 hours, 55 minutes
Czech: 2 hours, 20 minutes
3 x

Online
David27
Green Belt
Posts: 279
Joined: Thu Apr 13, 2017 8:52 pm
Languages: English (N)
French, Spanish (advanced)
Russian, Portuguese, Italian, German (proficient)
Mandarin, Japanese, Dutch (low-intermediate)
Latin, Polish: (beginner)
Abandoned languages (for now) :( Greek, Czech, Bengali, Arabic, Norwegian
x 987

Re: My language log

Postby David27 » Fri Dec 27, 2019 10:27 pm

I just looked back to a journal entry I made elsewhere 5 years ago. It is talking about my goal in 2010 that I made a lofty goal to learn these languages in the next 10 years:

“... English*, French*, Spanish, Russian, Arabic, Mandarin, Italian, German, Hebrew, Farsi. (In that order, *means already learned).

What once was fantasy, now seems a possibility, since I’m 25 years old, and well on my way to 10 languages by 30! With the current count being:

English*, French*, Spanish*, Russian*, Italian*, Portuguese*, German, Mandarin, Polish, (* meaning learned and no * meaning studying)”.

Now looking back, since then I’ve only learned German. About the time I wrote this I dropped Polish (just started picking it up again here and there in the last year), 6 months after writing this I started Japanese and still am pursuing it and Mandarin actively... 5 years later lol. The reason for such an intense slow down (besides other work, hobbies, and life events/priorities) is because language maintenance and ongoing improvement is a never ending battle, and with more languages it makes adding a difficult and delicate balancing act for me. On top of that, sticking with European languages allowed me to see much more rapid progress, my East Asian foray, while being very rewarding has been a slow and tedious process.

This month, I’ve spent the majority of my time working again on Mandarin, Japanese, and Russian. Mandarin I’m still going through Assimil part 2 for the umpteenth time transcribing and making sure I have the characters down pat and listening to popupchinese and Assimil audio, along with LingQ beginners level 2 lessons. Japanese I’ve done a lot of listening, but also starting to do more reading online, now reading each transcript for the japanesepod101 lessons that I’m doing. I’ve also dove into trying to understand how to construct and the meanings of the causative, passive, and causative passive verb construction so I spent a decent amount of time on tae Kim and other sites reading a lot of explanations and example sentences.... and that’s all I feel like writing for now, I’ll continue in my next post with other things I’ve been up to, and with 2020 goals!
9 x

Online
David27
Green Belt
Posts: 279
Joined: Thu Apr 13, 2017 8:52 pm
Languages: English (N)
French, Spanish (advanced)
Russian, Portuguese, Italian, German (proficient)
Mandarin, Japanese, Dutch (low-intermediate)
Latin, Polish: (beginner)
Abandoned languages (for now) :( Greek, Czech, Bengali, Arabic, Norwegian
x 987

Re: My language log

Postby David27 » Wed Jan 01, 2020 7:32 pm

I've done a bit more Bengali leading up to Christmas, in hopes that I would get Colloquial Bengali course that I asked for (far better than getting clothes :D ), and I did! I know it's not a smart move as it distracts me from Chinese and Japanese :( ... Also I have been distracted by Arabic, practicing how to read it and recognize all the letters (arabicreadingcourse.com is a great resource that helped me learn it) and I'm getting good at sounding out words and able to transcribe (poorly). 

December 2019 hours:
Russian: 10 hours, 45 minutes
Mandarin 10 hours, 20 minutes
Japanese: 10 hours, 5 minutes
Spanish: 2 hours, 40 minutes
Arabic: 2 hours, 30 minutes
German: 1 hour, 50 minutes
Italian: 1 hour, 40 minutes
Bengali: 1 hour, 30 minutes
Portuguese: 1 hour, 15 minutes
Polish: 20 minutes
Dutch: 15 minutes
French: 10 minutes

2019 Final amount:
Japanese: 136 hours, 0 minutes
Russian: 112 hours, 45 minutes
Mandarin: 100 hours, 40 minutes
Spanish:  88 hours, 10 minutes
French: 32 hours, 10 minutes
German: 22 hours, 50 minutes
Portuguese: 16 hours, 5 minutes
Italian: 12 hours, 55 minutes
Dutch: 9 hours, 55 minutes
Bengali: 8 hours, 30 minutes
Polish: 8 hours, 0 minutes
Arabic: 7 hours, 25 minutes
Czech: 2 hours, 20 minutes

Total: 549 hours, 45 minutes

This is a large improvement from last year, up from 403 to 549 hours, and close to my best year since I started recording (566). I met my goal for Mandarin, Japanese, and Russian with over a 100 hours on each of these, but I was hoping to have worked through more textbook stuff and starting on graded readers which I still am not to at this point, and have not gotten into music in Mandarin or Japanese at all.

Last year I also said I want my Mandarin and Japanese to be at B1 before diving into Arabic and Bengali, but I have started dipping my toes into both of these languages against my better judgment. I also dabbled very briefly in Czech but dropped it, and continued occasional very brief study of Dutch and Polish.

New Year's goals:

For the New Year, my primary objective is to beef up my Mandarin and Japanese. I spend a lot of time listening to podcast lessons and now reading the associated pdf for them, heavily using japanesepod101, using some popupchinese, and despite having using assimil for 5 years, I'm still repeating over and over assimil lessons, transcribing them, and listening to the lessons that I know over and over again. This I do think is helping my Mandarin tones, and all the vocabulary I know from this I also know how to read and write. The downside to this approach is I have a more limited vocabulary, to mainly what is used in the book and need to break away from this manner of study and move on to other materials (my John DeFrancis book for example). For Japanese, I still haven't really gotten deep into the Genki books, instead doing the pdf's for japanesepod101 and supplementing with Tae Kim grammar explanations and samples online in areas where I'm confused or need extra practice or explanations. I'm not too upset with this, as I feel like my Japanese is progressing at an acceptable pace. I've also been watching Terrace House on Netflix, which has multiple seasons with hundreds of hours of input for me, which is helping my passive understanding and hearing more casual Japanese. 

For the next decade, my goal is to be "fluent" B2 in Mandarin and Japanese, to be able to have a 1 hour conversation on skype in both languages, and to have read 1-2 books in both languages. I believe that is an achievable goal, especially if I break it up year by year and just chip away at it. I don't plan on becoming an expert, and will always have to look up words when reading, ask for clarification from time to time in conversations, and I'll make mistakes, but I want to be able to communicate with ease in these languages.

I also plan to put in over 100 hours a year in Russian, and read at least 2 books a year in Russian, but this isn't an exact goal, and if my interests take me elsewhere, I already am happy with the level of my Russian as is and can leave it at any time, knowing I've put in enough time that it won't regress even after periods of absence or decrease study, and it will be there waiting for me when I need it again (I was going to edit this run-on sentence, but I feel it's appropriate here as Russian writing is chock-full of run-on sentences). But for now I'm enjoying my reading and podcasts and interactions in Russian, so will continue.

A major problem with my goal is that I'm continually trying to sabotage myself by throwing in new interests. Ever since ~2008 I've been interested in picking up Arabic, and I'm finally starting to dabble in it. I've also had interest in other middle-eastern languages, occasionally being interested in and collecting resources for Farsi, Hebrew, and now South Asia is thrown in with Bengali. So the next decade will likely be Asian themed (counting of course Russian and Arabic as Asian here), whereas my last decades were largely European based. Happy New Years!
5 x

Online
David27
Green Belt
Posts: 279
Joined: Thu Apr 13, 2017 8:52 pm
Languages: English (N)
French, Spanish (advanced)
Russian, Portuguese, Italian, German (proficient)
Mandarin, Japanese, Dutch (low-intermediate)
Latin, Polish: (beginner)
Abandoned languages (for now) :( Greek, Czech, Bengali, Arabic, Norwegian
x 987

Re: My language log

Postby David27 » Sun Jan 12, 2020 7:50 pm

Shortly after I started this year, while reading other posts, I felt inspired to work harder on my Japanese and mandarin, matching the 30 minute a day challenge. So I increased my monthly goal for these languages from 10 to 15 hours a month (30 minutes a day) and this 150% increase will help me progress big time. So far so good with this goal this month. I’ve been using the same materials, but the extra time is helping me improve my pace through them, which is good positive reinforcement.

Otherwise the extra time towards Mandarin and Japanese just takes away from my other languages, which is ok. Still doing a bit of Arabic and Bengali here and there, but I don’t consider this studying as much as reconnaissance... so that when the full invasion starts I at least know the lay of the land (basic pronunciation, script, some basic grammar and phrases). Getting started as a true beginner is hard and can be a mental overload, so doing this I think will help me be able to hit the ground running when I do start giving it my full attention
5 x

Online
David27
Green Belt
Posts: 279
Joined: Thu Apr 13, 2017 8:52 pm
Languages: English (N)
French, Spanish (advanced)
Russian, Portuguese, Italian, German (proficient)
Mandarin, Japanese, Dutch (low-intermediate)
Latin, Polish: (beginner)
Abandoned languages (for now) :( Greek, Czech, Bengali, Arabic, Norwegian
x 987

Re: My language log

Postby David27 » Mon Jan 20, 2020 4:30 am

I saw the Korean movie parasite today. I was secretly hoping it would inspire me to start Korean, while my rational self told me of course I would never stretch myself thinner... but in the end I didn’t really like the movie and left feeling very uninspired. I know I’m in the minority here with this, as every review I’ve read and the people who I know who saw it loved it, I just couldn’t get behind it, and actually felt bored a few times. The things I enjoyed is the acting (the cast was great), it avoided stale tropes and clichés well, and even though I didn’t enjoy it, it made me think when I left the theater about what the director was saying, and why I didn’t think it was effective and why I didn’t overall enjoy it, so points for that. I won’t discuss negatives to avoid spoilers, go see it for yourselves and see what you think! So in the end, I backed away from the cliff safely, and not throwing my money at Korean coursebooks or researching best methods to learn Korean, and came home and just did some Mandarin vocabulary and sentence reviews in peace.

Other foreign language media: I’ve seen 4 episodes of the German show Dark on Netflix, and enjoyed it, and finished A past season of Terrace House (Japanese), so I’m now ready to move on to the new season. Anyone have Mandarin suggestions? I have been diving into a lot more Japanese media and it helps motivate me to want to study, I’d like to get the same bonus for Mandarin.
4 x

User avatar
dicentra8
Orange Belt
Posts: 117
Joined: Fri Sep 28, 2018 5:07 pm
Location: Portugal
Languages: Portuguese (N), Japanese (JLPT N3), Finnish (beginner), French (beginner)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=9114
x 230

Re: My language log

Postby dicentra8 » Mon Jan 20, 2020 10:57 pm

David27 wrote:finished A past season of Terrace House (Japanese), so I’m now ready to move on to the new season.

Question from someone who clearly hasn't properly followed Terrace House: is it the 2019-2020 one? I also started watching it a few days ago! :lol: Going to episode 10. I won't spoil. :P
Since I got pulled into watching it again, I might try to finish the Opening New Doors. I started watching the first episodes but never finished it.
0 x
"I have to watch the time I spend playing Tetris very carefully."


Return to “Language logs”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 2 guests