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

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galaxyrocker
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Re: Nótaí Galaxyrocker -- Irish and Wanderlust

Postby galaxyrocker » Sun Aug 30, 2020 1:47 am

crush wrote: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).


Intuitively, I feel this is what would be best for me. Read Genki or Tae Kim while doing immersion and vocabulary study, and definitely shift gears towards immersion more once I get to a point where I can at least read basic stuff, then do sentence mining from graded readers, perhaps. Now it's just to find shows with subtitles to get started with, and actually get started with it.

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).


No, I definitely suffer from that problem as well and my mind wanders a lot. But I have an hour or two every day that I can be listening, as I've got a nice commute where I'm stuck in the car the entire time. Which is part of why I was wanting to find podcasts, as there's not as much reliance on video, though I guess it doesn't matter much if there's very little comprehension at the beginning anyway.


Also, thanks to the links to AnimeCards. I'll get a look at them when I can find time, or stop getting super distracted again.

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.


That'd definitely be my time frame. I'm doing in because I'm debating applying for JET and would like to get involved in Japanese life while I'm there, which would require me to learn Japanese. It'd be a year from now, so if I could get basic comprehension by then, and decent comprehension after two years, it'd be worth it to me, for sure. And I'm sure I'd grow by leaps and bounds once I was in the country, if I do apply/get accepted/etc.

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As for other things, I haven't done much at all with Irish this week. Not even reading. It's been a chaotic week, with our students starting back online Wednesday and Monday and Tuesday being entirely prepping for it. That, and waking up at 4:30 every morning so I can go to the gym have made my focus shot by the time I get home in the afternoons; I've been completely sapped of willpower, which is something I hope to get back once I get back into the swing of this schedule. Also, I happened across a Sámi language/culture Discord server, and now that's tempting me, which is one I really don't need since I want to focus on Japanese/Irish (or maybe Spanish...who knows?). Especially as I can get at least a good hour in for each language on my commute. More if I could bring myself to read more in Irish in the afternoons and sentence mine things there. Though just getting into doing Anki would be great. I wish the iPhone app was free, though I understand why it isn't; guess I can do the browser, or just my laptop as I take it everywhere with me it, though it makes things a little bit more inconvenient than having it on my phone.

As for Japanese, I think I should just bite the bullet and get the Tango N5 book, and get the deck from Matt and them and just start at it. I feel I'm stuck in the resource paralysis section again. Which is quite frustrating as I can recognize I'm there, but not more on.
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crush
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Re: Nótaí Galaxyrocker -- Irish and Wanderlust

Postby crush » Sun Aug 30, 2020 10:29 am

galaxyrocker wrote:Which is part of why I was wanting to find podcasts, as there's not as much reliance on video, though I guess it doesn't matter much if there's very little comprehension at the beginning anyway.

Matt recommends listening to audio from the shows you've already watched. There's a folder of condensed audio for entire shows that someone shared on Reddit (just search 'condensed audio japanese reddit' or something and it should be one of the first results).

Also, are you familiar with the Subs2SRS sites? There are at least two sites that host Subs2SRS decks that other folks have made. I started using those + Morphman when i first started sentence mining. It's definitely faster than mining yourself, but you may not get as high quality cards. Still, i used that time to look up new grammar points and try to understand a sentence. If it was too hard, i just skipped it. Each show has tens of thousands of cards, so don't really need to worry about running out. I'm not sure if relying on Morphman is the best way to go about it, but in the beginning when it's so hard to find those i+1 cards, i think it can be a huge help. I don't use it anymore, though. There are other ways to use Subs2SRS than just plugging them into Morphman, so it might be something you want to look into to see if there's anything you might find useful/interesting.
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galaxyrocker
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Re: Nótaí Galaxyrocker -- Irish and Wanderlust

Postby galaxyrocker » Sun Aug 30, 2020 5:29 pm

crush wrote:Also, are you familiar with the Subs2SRS sites?


I'm not, but if they come with some premade decks, I might get on that after I do RRTK and such. It could be useful to give me a headstart while I start mining my own sentences, like you mentioned. Especially if there's several thousand cards per show. I also think it might be beneficial to go a bit more than i+1, at least at the start. It could help push me to getting decent grammatical exposure fairly quickly, which would then hopefully speed things up.

Thanks for the heads-up with those. Now, just to get into Anki and get going again.
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crush
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Re: Nótaí Galaxyrocker -- Irish and Wanderlust

Postby crush » Sun Aug 30, 2020 7:29 pm

Heh, not just some decks, hundreds if not thousands. And some of the shows (like Hunter x Hunter, which has over a hundred episodes) have tens of thousands of cards. Most shows are 10-20 episodes long and have around 3-500 sentences per episode. Of course, at first the majority of those cards are going to be unusable for a beginner, so i'd stick to i+1. That's strictly referring to vocabulary, so even if it is considered an i+1 card, there may be new grammar or new uses of a word that you haven't seen before. I did a lot of Googling and searching the Japanese Stack Exchange (and the r/LearnJapanese sub-reddit's Shitsumonday topic when i was really stuck, definitely check that out, i've received several answers to every single question i've asked there within a couple hours, it's amazing how helpful folks are) to build up my grammar base. A much easier route would be to do the two Tango books, the sentences are more straightforward and don't have the shortcuts that you commonly hear in anime (る/ら turning into ん or あい turning into えい, for example). I haven't looked into the Core decks, but that may be another decent low effort alternative to mining your own cards. I believe Matt recommended mining your own cards over using those decks, which is why i went that route, but they also said they didn't see them as a bad alternative and that you could count those as part of your card count for reaching Stage 2.

As for RRTK, i think i probably should've skipped it. I believe it's intended more for people who aren't familiar with the concept of characters (and coming from Mandarin/Cantonese, i was). I'm not sure what your experience is, but i wouldn't be afraid to start adding in the Tango deck after a couple hundred characters into RRTK. I waited until i was nearly finished with RRTK to start adding 5 cards a day and i kinda regret waiting so long. Tango is far more interesting than RRTK and may help push you through.

EDIT: Also, i know it's a shame that Anki's not free for the iPhone, but i think it's totally worth the $20 (i believe that's what it is). When i first started Mandarin, i bought a cheap Android phone with no cell provider just to use Pleco. Anki is such a huge part of your active study in MIA that it's really worth it, especially if you plan on fitting your reviews in your off time during the day.
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galaxyrocker
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Re: Nótaí Galaxyrocker -- Irish and Wanderlust

Postby galaxyrocker » Mon Aug 31, 2020 1:10 am

That actually sounds like a good idea. I might just do the first few characters, maybe a couple of week's worth at, say, 10-20 a day, to get a decent base then go straight in to the Tango books and using them. I think I'd find that much more enjoyable. Also, I do intend to buy Anki eventually, I'm just waiting to make sure I stick with it as I've not had much luck with using flashcards in the past, even when I know they're better for me and the best option. Once I get that routine built up, I'll definitely support Anki.

As for now, I think it's time to quit thinking about it, and to just start doing it. I'll likely spend tomorrow evening working on finding good audio content I can listen to in the car, as well as starting the first few cards of RRTK. It's a shame American Netflix seems to be quite poor in terms of Japanese language content, though I guess I could use a VPN and watch on my laptop.
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crush
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Re: Nótaí Galaxyrocker -- Irish and Wanderlust

Postby crush » Mon Aug 31, 2020 8:13 pm

Just today actually i stumbled across this Reddit post:
RRTK But It's Less Than 450 Cards
Something like that may be worth trying.
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galaxyrocker
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Re: Nótaí Galaxyrocker -- Irish and Wanderlust

Postby galaxyrocker » Tue Sep 08, 2020 10:19 pm

Finally started doing some Anki, for both Irish and Japanese with RRTK. My only issue is the reviews in Japanese are getting out of hand. The first few days I did 30 cards as Matt mentioned you could be finished in roughly a month, though I dropped to 15 after a few days. But then I missed yesterday as I thought I had already done them but apparently not, and my reviews just drowned me out. I am debating about doing the 450-card variant to see if that'll help.

There are a few I'm really struggling with recognizing, however, and I wonder if it's because I'm not good at creating stories to help remember them. I'm just trying to get them purely by recognition, without any leeches, but it's not really happening well. I want to finish it quickly, but being hampered to only doing Anki on my laptop currently makes it much more difficult to take advantage of all my free time.

That said, I reset the deck complete and am going to go at just 15 a day and see if I do any better and was just going overkill at 30 a day. If I get comfortable here, I'll try to up my game again, but I feel ending in a little over 2 months isn't horrible, even though reading is going to be my main immersion source. Which is something else I haven't started with yet either. Not gotten in on the immersion, even to listening and even though I've found a few podcasts. The same is true with Irish, I haven't hopped in on that yet either, though I've done a little listening in the car. Not nearly as much as I should have. Really, all I've done is transcribe dialectal stories for my blog... Man, I need to get focused and get immersion going, especially if I want to be at least a little bit decent if I do go to Japan next year.
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crush
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Re: Nótaí Galaxyrocker -- Irish and Wanderlust

Postby crush » Wed Sep 09, 2020 12:41 pm

galaxyrocker wrote:The first few days I did 30 cards as Matt mentioned you could be finished in roughly a month, though I dropped to 15 after a few days.

30 is a huge mistake in my opinion unless you're young with loads of times, lots of energy, and nothing to do. I started off with 20 and eventually slowed down to 15 and may have gone down to 10, i can't remember. I used the RTK book, not sure if you have that, but i took a lot of time creating stories for each card and thinking up names for the radicals. I also took some liberty in changing some of the radicals to suit my interests more or when i had no idea what the English word meant. Story creation for 20 a day took a long time for me and story creation is where i spent the bulk of my time. Now i remember 0% of the stories (there's maybe one or two i do remember) and don't really remember the meanings i had assigned them either.

In my head now they mostly have the general meaning they take in the words they're used in, which i guess is kinda the same, but RRTK has completely disappeared from my mind at this point. However, i think the main point of RRTK is just to get you familiar with the characters and realize that there is some logic behind them, they're not just random splatters of ink on the page. If i were to go through it again i'd do it differently, but i'm not sure how exactly.
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galaxyrocker
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Re: Nótaí Galaxyrocker -- Irish and Wanderlust

Postby galaxyrocker » Thu Sep 10, 2020 2:23 am

I'm finding 15 to be a much better pacing, for sure, though I might drop if I start to find it overwhelming again. Maybe even go to 0 a day for a few days to settle in and catch up. As of right now, there's not many that i need to create stories for, but it'll come I'm sure. Definitely won't hesitate doing that, though part of me feels like it's a waste of time when I could just be learning, even if that's what helps me learn.
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galaxyrocker
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Re: Nótaí Galaxyrocker -- Irish and Wanderlust

Postby galaxyrocker » Sun Sep 13, 2020 11:25 pm

Still on track with Anki cards, though I've dropped to 10 a day on the RRTK deck. I think it'd be easier and I could keep up with 15 if I could spread them throughout the day, but since I'm still currently only doing them on my laptop, I don't feel comfortable doing that. Maybe I'll try tomorrow and see how it goes, if it makes it easier. I'm also doing 5 words a day for Irish, just to expand my vocabulary some. Not really doing much immersion in either language, though.

That said, I think I'm going to find some Japanese audiobooks. Most the podcasts I've found are short, meaning I'd run through them super quickly if I were to use them for immersion purposes, whereas I think I can drag an audiobook out, even if I just listen to it one-way on my commute. Even though that's not really focused listening like Matt recommends, it's better than what I'm doing now, and, well, I struggle to do much focused immersion in my native language even. I zoom out while listening to podcasts while driving, for instance, and forget what was said, even if it's an interesting topic. Same with watching TV and stuff - I struggle to stay focused on it. Might should get that checked out.

Otherwise, nothing new to report other than I'm almost done teaching myself from Pinter's A Book of Abstract Algebra and am looking at either going more in-depth with Algebra or moving on to Geometric Algebra, and the physics implications that come with it. I'm a languages and maths nerd, though I need to get back into linguistics too.
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