Nótaí galaxyrocker - Ancient Celtic Languages, (Old) French, Latin, Old English

Continue or start your personal language log here, including logs for challenge participants
galaxyrocker
Brown Belt
Posts: 1118
Joined: Mon Jul 20, 2015 12:44 am
Languages: English (N), Irish (Teastas Eorpach na Gaeilge B2), French, dabbling elsewhere sometimes
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=757
x 3324

Re: Nótaí Galaxyrocker -- Irish and Wanderlust

Postby galaxyrocker » Sun Aug 16, 2020 2:27 am

tangleweeds wrote:Don't be too hard on yourself. So very many otherwise very enterprising people have talked to me about having way more trouble than usual focusing, despite of course having hoped to accomplish whatever aspirations with all this pandemic free time. Even occasional TL reading is better than many people I know have managed. I myself have only gotten my brain working again about a month ago.


Yeah, I understand that. Though I wasn't particularly productive before the pandemic either, which might be a double part of the problem.

I empathize, I'm in the same position with finding Japanese materials for input. If anyone has suggestions... I'm watching Alice in Tokyo, which is great as a woman to observe female mannerisms, though I've gotta ignore the main character's over the top mugging and keep my eyes on the secondary characters.


Might give that a try. It's really frustrating that so many of the people who are learning Japanese do it for anime/manga. I've nothing against it, and will even watch/read them from time to time, but it makes it much harder to find any other recommendations!

If nothing else, keep this idea alive in the back of your skull. You're at a level where I think you would benefit from this a lot. I'm not at that level in anything but French, and only because I learned it so young.


Oh, I definitely will! I'll likely start trying to incorporate it in somehow, maybe on my afternoon commute since work (I'm a teacher) is starting back up Monday and we're sadly required to be there in person, even if the students won't be.

I know, it feels like that sometimes. But I enjoy everything you post here about Connemara Irish--it's super useful to me, as I'm focusing on that dialect too. And your blog is excellent! Please do continue when your muse speaks. We're are indeed out here listening!


I appreciate the comment! It is nice to know someone is getting something out of the blog other than me, and that people are listening. I'm glad to see that you've returned here as well, and are on the mend! Best of wishes on that as well.
2 x

crush
Blue Belt
Posts: 514
Joined: Mon Nov 30, 2015 3:35 pm
Languages: EN (N), ES, ZH
Maintain: EUS, YUE, JP, HAW
Study: TGL, SV
On Hold: RU
x 953

Re: Nótaí Galaxyrocker -- Irish and Wanderlust

Postby crush » Sun Aug 16, 2020 9:33 am

galaxyrocker wrote:However, I got through roughly two small chapters and had over 200 words in Excel to translate and I just got tired of it, and never felt like looking them up. So I stopped reading and working on that for a while.

Have you tried ebooks? I know a lot of people don't like them, but i've begun using them for Basque and it's helped enormously because i can automate so many things. I can highlight a sentence and just move on, no need to do anything else. Then when i'm done with the book (or every 50-100 sentences gathered) i can transfer those to the computer, select the word i want to learn, and just run it through a script that queries an online dictionary and translates everything for me. It's a much more fluid reading experience than writing words down in a notebook or constantly looking words up in the dictionary.

galaxyrocker wrote:That said, I've been toying with the idea of restarting Japanese using a combination of MIA and Genki (since I already have the textbook and workbook).

I've been using MIA for Japanese as well. I bought the Genki books before i learned about MIA, i ended up not using them. The beginning stages of MIA can be tough, though Matt has apparently changed things again. I'm at one year (and 16 days) now and i can see the progress i've made, but it's still rough at times. I probably only understand 50% or so of a show which isn't enough to follow the plot very well.

galaxyrocker wrote:It's still tentative, as most of the reading/videos people suggest are all anime/manga and I don't have a huge interest in that stuff, so it's harder to find good recommendations on easy to read works and video to immerse myself in.

My motivation for learning Japanese was video games. I never watched anime or read manga so really had no interest in those things. I have watched one or two that i really enjoyed, but most of them were fluff just for the sake of listening to native audio. If i understood them better i may have enjoyed them more, it's hard to say though. I've begun watching some Japanese movies and those have been more interesting. But like you, what i've been enjoying the most is reading (i have the advantage of being familiar with most of the characters from having learned Mandarin/Cantonese).

I think you'd get a lot out of it for Irish, i've wanted to do it with Basque as well but there's just not enough time in the day to do such an intensive method on two languages at once.

I also wanted to say that i enjoy your posts throughout the site, i love the insight you provide in particular on the Irish-language community. I don't have plans to learn Irish but I have studied another Celtic language (Welsh) and all Celtic languages (and regional languages in general) have a special place in my heart.
2 x

galaxyrocker
Brown Belt
Posts: 1118
Joined: Mon Jul 20, 2015 12:44 am
Languages: English (N), Irish (Teastas Eorpach na Gaeilge B2), French, dabbling elsewhere sometimes
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=757
x 3324

Re: Nótaí Galaxyrocker -- Irish and Wanderlust

Postby galaxyrocker » Sun Aug 16, 2020 12:05 pm

crush wrote:Have you tried ebooks? I know a lot of people don't like them, but i've begun using them for Basque and it's helped enormously because i can automate so many things. I can highlight a sentence and just move on, no need to do anything else. Then when i'm done with the book (or every 50-100 sentences gathered) i can transfer those to the computer, select the word i want to learn, and just run it through a script that queries an online dictionary and translates everything for me. It's a much more fluid reading experience than writing words down in a notebook or constantly looking words up in the dictionary.


I have for the stuff that's available as ebooks - one of the big Irish publishing companies actually gave out an ebook a week for two months while everything over there was quarantined. However, I'm currently reading older books as I've found they imitate the dialect more accurately, which means most of them don't have ebook representations, unless it's a pdf I've scanned myself.

I've been using MIA for Japanese as well. I bought the Genki books before i learned about MIA, i ended up not using them. The beginning stages of MIA can be tough, though Matt has apparently changed things again. I'm at one year (and 16 days) now and i can see the progress i've made, but it's still rough at times. I probably only understand 50% or so of a show which isn't enough to follow the plot very well.


That's good to know, that progress does come. I've been hesitant to start MIA (also because I do kinda like studying grammar; I'm the oddball in that, though) partially because of that, as well as Genki. But to know that you've got that much progress in a year, well, it's encouraging. Especially if Matt is updating the beginning stages of MIA. Sadly, I'm not a Patreon subscriber, so I'll have to wait for a rewrite of the guide.

My motivation for learning Japanese was video games.


Aye, that's definitely part of mine as well. I'd love to play some of those old (or even new!) games that haven't been translated.

I think you'd get a lot out of it for Irish, i've wanted to do it with Basque as well but there's just not enough time in the day to do such an intensive method on two languages at once.


That's my main fear, especially with work starting back up on the 17th. I can squeeze close to 2 hours in while commuting, but I find that ends up being more passive than active, so I'm not sure how beneficial it would be. It'd probably work for Irish, but definitely not for Japanese at Matt explains it. Then add in wanting to go to the gym and doing other stuff once I do get home, and it makes it very difficult to find more than maybe an hour or two a day. Maybe I can squeeze some in to work, at least the first few days, as we have a few hours in the afternoon to just answer questions and sit around waiting for someone to want to join Google Meet. I'll possibly give it a try, at least.

I also wanted to say that i enjoy your posts throughout the site, i love the insight you provide in particular on the Irish-language community. I don't have plans to learn Irish but I have studied another Celtic language (Welsh) and all Celtic languages (and regional languages in general) have a special place in my heart.


Thanks, I appreciate it. I definitely agree with your opinion on regional languages, and have Basque on my shortlist of languages I really want to learn (along with N. Sámi) for that exact same reason.
3 x

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: Nótaí Galaxyrocker -- Irish and Wanderlust

Postby David27 » Sun Aug 16, 2020 10:48 pm

Regarding Japanese, I can sympathize with your issues trying to find media you enjoy, while there is a multitude of resources available, it’s sometimes hard to find something to your taste. I started learning Japanese because i was learning Mandarin and a friend was really into Japanese and wanted to learn it, and I like Japanese food and liked learning the Chinese characters so went along with it, and got hooked on the language. I sympathize with you having trouble finding media you enjoy. I also never got into anime before studying the language, and I don’t like horror which is pretty prevelent in Japanese recommended movies. I also don’t get a lot of Japanese comedy (cultural references/jokes over my head) I watched a lot of Terrace House which I recommend. It is a reality show based on 3 men and 3 women living together in a house, which is good because you get generic vocabulary used between friends living together, going on dates, etc. I recommend the season opening new doors to start. Sadly even though the personalities are quite mild and overall likable people (for the most part), one cast member in the most recent season committed suicide due to cyber bullying which stopped the season and makes me feel really sad about how that woman was treated online.

Giri/Haji is a detective/crime series highly rated on Netflix which is on my watch list.

Eventually I started to dabble in anime as well for more exposure to Japanese language and culture. The good thing is there are a variety of topics, about any topic has an anime/manga. I’ve tried several anime, often just watching a few episodes and deciding it’s not for me, but I did watch and like full metal alchemist brotherhood which is on Netflix (it is a typical fighting anime though so if that’s a hard pass for you I would say skip it), I also liked In This Corner of the World which is a movie about an 18 year old woman living in Japan during WW2. So if you want to give an anime a shot I would recommend those.

Good luck!
3 x

crush
Blue Belt
Posts: 514
Joined: Mon Nov 30, 2015 3:35 pm
Languages: EN (N), ES, ZH
Maintain: EUS, YUE, JP, HAW
Study: TGL, SV
On Hold: RU
x 953

Re: Nótaí Galaxyrocker -- Irish and Wanderlust

Postby crush » Mon Aug 17, 2020 8:47 am

galaxyrocker wrote:I have for the stuff that's available as ebooks - one of the big Irish publishing companies actually gave out an ebook a week for two months while everything over there was quarantined. However, I'm currently reading older books as I've found they imitate the dialect more accurately, which means most of them don't have ebook representations, unless it's a pdf I've scanned myself.

Ah that's great that books are being published in ebook formats! PDFs are generally less convenient to use with ebook readers, but for reading on a computer than can be decent, in particular if there's not much you need to look up.

That's also a shame about "standard" Irish diverging from colloquial speech, i know there's a similar issue with literary Welsh. It also happens in Basque to a lesser extent (depending on which dialect you speak).

galaxyrocker wrote:That's good to know, that progress does come. I've been hesitant to start MIA (also because I do kinda like studying grammar; I'm the oddball in that, though) partially because of that, as well as Genki. But to know that you've got that much progress in a year, well, it's encouraging. Especially if Matt is updating the beginning stages of MIA. Sadly, I'm not a Patreon subscriber, so I'll have to wait for a rewrite of the guide.

I also enjoy grammar study but grammar in Japanese (and in the other Asian languages i've studied, namely Mandarin/Cantonese/Shanghainese) is a bit different from the European and American languages i'm familiar with. Often times it feels more like learning how and when to use words than specific grammar points. In Basque i learned verb conjugations and cases and really enjoy this sort of thing. But the grammar in Japanese has felt less obvious to me.

One of the things Matt recently changed was letting you use native (aka for me and you: English) subtitles at the starting stages and gradually drifting away from them as you get to "Stage 2". When i started, he recommended not using subtitles at all if possible. This made the first six-seven months pretty tough as i was understanding practically nothing. I eventually got around this by reading episode summaries before watching an episode, this made shows more enjoyable as i could follow along better with the story despite my low comprehension. Not sure when exactly i stopped doing this, probably around 8 months or so when my comprehension was getting to around 30-40%.

He has changed the method quite a few times though and what he prescribes now isn't the method he used for learning Japanese, so that's just something to keep in mind.

galaxyrocker wrote:I can squeeze close to 2 hours in while commuting, but I find that ends up being more passive than active, so I'm not sure how beneficial it would be. It'd probably work for Irish, but definitely not for Japanese at Matt explains it.

I also am not overflowing with time, i'm lucky in that a lot of my off time i can dedicate to language learning, though. For the first 8 months or so i probably averaged around 1-1.5 hours of immersion a day + my daily Anki reviews. In the beginning i'd play Japanese anime shows while working, but i found it distracting and often times there would be girls with really high-pitched ("cute") voices or people crying that just annoyed me so i just stopped. Now that i'm reading i get more immersion per day in, probably closer to 2.5 hours, as it's easier for me to read for long periods of time than watch anime or Japanese shows.

galaxyrocker wrote:...[I] have Basque on my shortlist of languages I really want to learn (along with N. Sámi) for that exact same reason.

Definitely give it a shot, i'd be more than happy to help you get started (and keep you motivated during your journey!) as i love this language! It's got a really different way of expressing things, the verb system is really interesting and unlike anything you've probably ever seen/studied before.
3 x

galaxyrocker
Brown Belt
Posts: 1118
Joined: Mon Jul 20, 2015 12:44 am
Languages: English (N), Irish (Teastas Eorpach na Gaeilge B2), French, dabbling elsewhere sometimes
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=757
x 3324

Re: Nótaí Galaxyrocker -- Irish and Wanderlust

Postby galaxyrocker » Sun Aug 23, 2020 12:43 pm

Whew! What a week. It's been quite hectic, as school started back up and I was just super busy all day, every day. And kids aren't even there yet! I'm sure Monday and Tuesday this will will be the same, until the students do join us online Wendesday. Hopefully after that it'll calm down some, especially since we get 2 hours each day to prep, and I only have two different classes to prep for.

I didn't do much with anything this week, though I did get some new books in Irish in, including dictionaries of two extinct dialects and a book on the study of folklore. Nothing with Japanese/Spanish either, as I still haven't found any programs (or time!) I'm interested in for MIA. I might just end up picking the first drama I found in a shared Google Drive folder and watch that an hour or two a day. I wish I could do it during my commute, but I know I wouldn't be focused enough on it. All of this is complicated by the fact I rarely watch TV.

crush wrote:Ah that's great that books are being published in ebook formats! PDFs are generally less convenient to use with ebook readers, but for reading on a computer than can be decent, in particular if there's not much you need to look up.


Yeah, that's what I've discovered with my Kindle Fire, which I keep because Scribd has Irish ebooks. But, back on my old Kindle, I didn't find PDF files that difficult really. They loaded just like a book, except there was more stuff on the screen. With the Fire, it's a pain to even find them!

crush wrote:One of the things Matt recently changed was letting you use native (aka for me and you: English) subtitles at the starting stages and gradually drifting away from them as you get to "Stage 2". When i started, he recommended not using subtitles at all if possible. This made the first six-seven months pretty tough as i was understanding practically nothing. I eventually got around this by reading episode summaries before watching an episode, this made shows more enjoyable as i could follow along better with the story despite my low comprehension. Not sure when exactly i stopped doing this, probably around 8 months or so when my comprehension was getting to around 30-40%.


Now that's interesting. I remember reading about it on the subreddit, but it was just in passing. He hasn't updated the Japanese Quickstart Guide yet, it seems, as I just read that and he still recommends against subtitles. I can definitely see why, as subtitles are just super distracting for me, but if it keeps you focused and listening it's a better deal. I might try to do both - I'd prefer to do the original plan, which is closer to what Matt himself followed from my understanding, but if it gets too bad, I'll just throw on the subs for a while. And a great idea about episode summaries! I might see what I can find along those lines.

crush wrote:I also am not overflowing with time, i'm lucky in that a lot of my off time i can dedicate to language learning, though. For the first 8 months or so i probably averaged around 1-1.5 hours of immersion a day + my daily Anki reviews. In the beginning i'd play Japanese anime shows while working, but i found it distracting and often times there would be girls with really high-pitched ("cute") voices or people crying that just annoyed me so i just stopped. Now that i'm reading i get more immersion per day in, probably closer to 2.5 hours, as it's easier for me to read for long periods of time than watch anime or Japanese shows.


I do have a lot of off-time I could use to review Anki cards, so that would come in handy. Though I'm also running iOS so am hesitant to buy Anki before I know whether I'll stick with it as I'm generally not a fan of flashcards. Once I hit reading, it'd all get much easier, as you said. But I could possibly leverage my two hour prep/planning times into something useful, depending on how many students need help and what I'm doing the next day. That'd be nice.

crush wrote:Definitely give it a shot, i'd be more than happy to help you get started (and keep you motivated during your journey!) as i love this language! It's got a really different way of expressing things, the verb system is really interesting and unlike anything you've probably ever seen/studied before.


I will eventually, and I'll remember to ask for help. I've already got several textbooks/grammars just because I've found enjoyed reading about it.

On a side note, does anyone know any good Japanese podcasts? Looking for something I could put on in the car and not lose out from lack of visual aspect of things. I'd prefer something history related, though folklore, science, news, etc. would all work as well at this point I guess. I've got a nice commute I'd love to be able to take advantage of.
2 x

crush
Blue Belt
Posts: 514
Joined: Mon Nov 30, 2015 3:35 pm
Languages: EN (N), ES, ZH
Maintain: EUS, YUE, JP, HAW
Study: TGL, SV
On Hold: RU
x 953

Re: Nótaí Galaxyrocker -- Irish and Wanderlust

Postby crush » Mon Aug 24, 2020 9:26 am

I think the main thing is just to keep you interested/pushing through. My guess would be that Matt still recommends NOT using subtitles at all, however so many people have complained that the beginning stages are so hard that Matt's lightened up to make it more accessible. I'm still not 100% sure that casual immersion (1-2 hours a day) is all that helpful when you understand 0% of it, at least not more useful than spending that time studying, but i can't say. Hardcore AJATTers tend to get very good results within the first year or two so there is something to be said for immersion-based methods, i'm not sure if there's a threshold of active immersion per day you need to reach for it to be really effective though. Japanese has been the slowest language i've learned so far, but it also has so many more challenges than even Mandarin and Cantonese, and the goal of MIA is building a high level of fluency and not reaching conversational ability quickly (with the -- according to them -- possible risk of ingraining bad habits).

Matt has also recently changed their preferred card type from audio sentence recognition cards to a more DJT/animecards style. MIA is a bit of a language learning playground, there are a lot of people using it and it would be really interesting to see what the results of different changes are in the long-term (i.e. how using DJT cards vs Audio-Sentence cards affects learning). I myself switched over to the animecards format a few months back.

I can attest to the method working, as my Japanese has improved from 0 to being able to somewhat follow slice-of-life animes within a year (and being able to read/follow along with the first Harry Potter book in Japanese). I'm not 100% sure that immersing when you have such low comprehension is more effective than studying vocabulary and grammar, it's something i'm still trying to figure out for myself. The concept makes sense, and i have no doubt that at the intermediate stage and beyond it's absolutely true, but it was tough at the beginning stages. If there were more anime i were interested in (or rather, if the anime i'm interested in were less abstract/sci-fi-ish) perhaps it would've been easier. The main thing that attracted me to MIA at first was that it focuses exclusively on passive abilities from Stage 1 to Stage 2 and i'm more interested in consuming Japanese media than producing it ;) It's also relatively low maintenance: you just need to watch shows and read and get comfortable skipping what you don't understand. So while it's time consuming, it's relatively low effort.

As for podcasts, probably not much help but the two i listen to are hiiki biiki (ひいきびいき) -- a show where they pick a topic and discuss it for an hour or two -- and Sakura Tsuushin. To be honest i'm not really sure what the second one is about as i don't understand enough to follow along :lol: I just found both of them suggested on Reddit when searching for Japanese podcasts. I generally listen to them when going out for a jog. I probably listen to Hiiki Biiki more. Their site's down though so you have to find the episodes on other radio sites that backed up the mp3s.

EDIT: And if you're interested in technology, Rebuild.fm is also (supposedly) pretty good. I say supposedly because i don't understand enough to follow along.
2 x

nagoyana
White Belt
Posts: 39
Joined: Fri Oct 25, 2019 3:15 pm
Languages: DE (N), EN (C*), JA (C*/N1), FR (B2), KO (B?/TOPIK5), CN (just starting...)
x 106

Re: Nótaí Galaxyrocker -- Irish and Wanderlust

Postby nagoyana » Mon Aug 24, 2020 6:46 pm

galaxyrocker wrote:On a side note, does anyone know any good Japanese podcasts? Looking for something I could put on in the car and not lose out from lack of visual aspect of things. I'd prefer something history related, though folklore, science, news, etc. would all work as well at this point I guess. I've got a nice commute I'd love to be able to take advantage of.

I have only listened to a few episodes of each myself, but if you like history, you might want to check out the following:
Mook Study 日本の歴史 (for Japanese history)
世界一周!チラ見の世界史 (for world history (in small doses))

Both are intended for a Japanese audience, but I found them quite accessible.
Maybe the world history one a bit more than the one about Japanese history, but that probably only shows that I should have studied harder for my Japanese history lectures at university :lol:
1 x
Corrections in any language are much appreciated.

galaxyrocker
Brown Belt
Posts: 1118
Joined: Mon Jul 20, 2015 12:44 am
Languages: English (N), Irish (Teastas Eorpach na Gaeilge B2), French, dabbling elsewhere sometimes
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=757
x 3324

Re: Nótaí Galaxyrocker -- Irish and Wanderlust

Postby galaxyrocker » Tue Aug 25, 2020 1:27 am

crush wrote:I think the main thing is just to keep you interested/pushing through. My guess would be that Matt still recommends NOT using subtitles at all, however so many people have complained that the beginning stages are so hard that Matt's lightened up to make it more accessible. I'm still not 100% sure that casual immersion (1-2 hours a day) is all that helpful when you understand 0% of it, at least not more useful than spending that time studying, but i can't say. Hardcore AJATTers tend to get very good results within the first year or two so there is something to be said for immersion-based methods, i'm not sure if there's a threshold of active immersion per day you need to reach for it to be really effective though. Japanese has been the slowest language i've learned so far, but it also has so many more challenges than even Mandarin and Cantonese, and the goal of MIA is building a high level of fluency and not reaching conversational ability quickly (with the -- according to them -- possible risk of ingraining bad habits).


That makes perfect sense, honestly. I think I'm more likely to get all the kana down, and then go straight into RRTK. Once I've done that, I'll likely start adding in vocab (need to find me a copy of the N5 book) and work on that while reading grammar explanations, and maybe do that at a rate quicker than what Matt suggests as I actually find it interesting enough. Basically, immerse myself, but focus more on vocab at first than active immersion. Do Anki and such, listen to podcasts/tv shows on my commute and then go into active immersion maybe once I've gotten a bit of vocab built up.

Matt has also recently changed their preferred card type from audio sentence recognition cards to a more DJT/animecards style. MIA is a bit of a language learning playground, there are a lot of people using it and it would be really interesting to see what the results of different changes are in the long-term (i.e. how using DJT cards vs Audio-Sentence cards affects learning). I myself switched over to the animecards format a few months back.


Oh? I haven't seen that yet. I've really only read the quickstart guide, and haven't watched many of his videos, but I'll do some research on there.

I can attest to the method working, as my Japanese has improved from 0 to being able to somewhat follow slice-of-life animes within a year (and being able to read/follow along with the first Harry Potter book in Japanese). I'm not 100% sure that immersing when you have such low comprehension is more effective than studying vocabulary and grammar, it's something i'm still trying to figure out for myself. The concept makes sense, and i have no doubt that at the intermediate stage and beyond it's absolutely true, but it was tough at the beginning stages. If there were more anime i were interested in (or rather, if the anime i'm interested in were less abstract/sci-fi-ish) perhaps it would've been easier. The main thing that attracted me to MIA at first was that it focuses exclusively on passive abilities from Stage 1 to Stage 2 and i'm more interested in consuming Japanese media than producing it ;) It's also relatively low maintenance: you just need to watch shows and read and get comfortable skipping what you don't understand. So while it's time consuming, it's relatively low effort.


I guess part of my issue would be my time constraint, as I'd like to speed it up, but don't really have the hours in the day to immerse actively enough. But it's still great ot see the progress you've made within a year, and very encouraging too. Definitely agree on the interests aspect of things, though.

As for podcasts, probably not much help but the two i listen to are hiiki biiki (ひいきびいき) -- a show where they pick a topic and discuss it for an hour or two -- and Sakura Tsuushin. To be honest i'm not really sure what the second one is about as i don't understand enough to follow along :lol: I just found both of them suggested on Reddit when searching for Japanese podcasts. I generally listen to them when going out for a jog. I probably listen to Hiiki Biiki more. Their site's down though so you have to find the episodes on other radio sites that backed up the mp3s.


Thanks, I appreciate it! I'll look into them, especially since I'm mainly looking at passive stuff while I do vocab study.

nagoyana wrote:Both are intended for a Japanese audience, but I found them quite accessible.


Awesome, thank you! The world history one sounds interesting, and I'm not too particular on Japanese history, I just thought it'd be a good way to study while learning more about the culture and history (once I could actually understand it, that is. Maybe by the time I reached the Meiji Era!).
1 x

crush
Blue Belt
Posts: 514
Joined: Mon Nov 30, 2015 3:35 pm
Languages: EN (N), ES, ZH
Maintain: EUS, YUE, JP, HAW
Study: TGL, SV
On Hold: RU
x 953

Re: Nótaí Galaxyrocker -- Irish and Wanderlust

Postby crush » Tue Aug 25, 2020 10:46 am

galaxyrocker wrote:That makes perfect sense, honestly. I think I'm more likely to get all the kana down, and then go straight into RRTK. Once I've done that, I'll likely start adding in vocab (need to find me a copy of the N5 book) and work on that while reading grammar explanations, and maybe do that at a rate quicker than what Matt suggests as I actually find it interesting enough. Basically, immerse myself, but focus more on vocab at first than active immersion. Do Anki and such, listen to podcasts/tv shows on my commute and then go into active immersion maybe once I've gotten a bit of vocab built up.

There's definitely something to be said for getting used to the sounds and what not, but so long as you're not getting burned out (RRTK was burning me out near the end, as was the Tango N5 deck) you should be fine putting more time into vocabulary and grammar than into immersion in the beginning. I'd say it's probably more effective if you aren't a huge anime fan and don't have a long list of shows you'd like to rewatch, but that's just a personal opinion and i don't have any evidence to back that up. You may want to try doing the Tango N5 and N4 deck before starting to hit the immersion hard (immersing more than active study) or even trying one of the core 3k/6k decks. Both Tango books have been made into Anki decks, you just need proof of purchase and Matt will send you the decks. Perhaps put more emphasis on immersion when you get to the point where it's fun to mine cards. I can generally pull about 20 common i+1 words per slice-of-life episode, though i separate sentence mining from regular immersion. Currently i'm mining shows i'm more interested in as i can follow the plot much better (since the subtitles are there).

But i still think you should be listening to Japanese every day, i'd aim for something similar to what i was getting: 30 minutes to an hour a day. I'd feel fine calling your commute time active immersion even if it's not 100% active. At the beginner stages, even if you're putting all your attention into a show, it's not going to be 100% active anyway as your comprehension is so low and your mind will wander (if you're anything like me at least, heh).

galaxyrocker wrote:Oh? I haven't seen that yet. I've really only read the quickstart guide, and haven't watched many of his videos, but I'll do some research on there.

He talks about it a bit here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfvDKgNUSi8

That setup is basically the exact one mentioned on Anime Cards, just without crediting them ;) The main difference is Matt suggests using their (MIA's) Anki add-on to add cards rather than Yomichan's built-in one. I've found using Yomichan much faster as you can have it export the vocabulary word, the audio, and the sentence directly for you so you just need to grab a screenshot (not really sure how much that helps to be honest, most of my screenshots from anime are just the character's face, not a whole lot of context) and the sentence audio.

The original MIA method was listening to a sentence (or reading it) and trying to recall the meaning. The "new" method seems to be the DJT method where you have a vocab word on front with no audio. You try to recall the pronunciation and meaning, then on the other side of the card you have the word audio + sentence + audio if you need to be reminded of the context. This method has been much faster than the sentence audio one as after recalling (or not) the word i don't need to listen to the entire sentence. It also helps when mining sentences as i don't need to find crystal clear sentences. A lot of the sentences would have perfect i+1 cards that i wanted to use but have a huge explosion happening at the same time making it hard to listen to. Now, even if there's an explosion, i can just read the sentence if i want a reminder of the context in which the word's used and that helps me make out the words when listening to the audio. The concept behind the cards is described in the introduction on the Anime Cards site. I don't quite buy the whole concept, but it has made my Anki reviews faster which gives me more time for immersion (or just other things i want to do in a day), so i've stuck with it.

galaxyrocker wrote:I guess part of my issue would be my time constraint, as I'd like to speed it up, but don't really have the hours in the day to immerse actively enough. But it's still great ot see the progress you've made within a year, and very encouraging too. Definitely agree on the interests aspect of things, though.

I'm hoping by the end of the year (starting from August, so August 2021 :P ) i'll be at a stage where i can just enjoy Japanese content. My original goal was to be able to enjoy my favorite JRPGs in Japanese, so that's going to be my goal for this year: reach that level. I'm currently studying ten new words a day so that should give me another 3000+ words assuming i don't kick the number up at some point as words get easier to learn from having come across them enough in my reading. I think two years at a "casual" pace like mine isn't out of the question, especially if you're more concerned with passive skills.

So if it's something you're really interested in and you don't mind dedicating (probably) around 2 years to it, i think you should go for it! Just know that it may interfere with your other languages, taking time away from them. That's how it's been for me at least.
2 x


Return to “Language logs”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 2 guests