I fail words -- devilyoudont's Japanese & Esperanto log

Continue or start your personal language log here, including logs for challenge participants
User avatar
devilyoudont
Blue Belt
Posts: 571
Joined: Tue Jun 26, 2018 1:34 am
Location: Philadelphia
Languages: EN (N), EO (C), JA (B), ES (A)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=16424
x 1829
Contact:

Re: devilyoudont's Japanese/Spanish/Esperanto log

Postby devilyoudont » Tue Sep 18, 2018 10:04 pm

sillygoose1 wrote:I hope you feel better. The same thing happens to me frequently and it makes things difficult but it's good you still got some study time in!


Thanks sillygoose1. Sorry to hear you're also struggling with this periodically
1 x

User avatar
devilyoudont
Blue Belt
Posts: 571
Joined: Tue Jun 26, 2018 1:34 am
Location: Philadelphia
Languages: EN (N), EO (C), JA (B), ES (A)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=16424
x 1829
Contact:

Re: devilyoudont's Japanese/Spanish/Esperanto log

Postby devilyoudont » Sat Sep 22, 2018 7:02 pm

Sooo I had to reset my phone to factory settings this week, and did that without backing up, so this week is not gonna be a tremendously accurate log!

Japanese:
--Finished both seasons of マイドリーム大作戦 (The Tamahome Audiodrama Podcast). WOW I burned thru that fast. Looking for a new podcast to go thru the archives of in Japanese.
--Finished the TV Series for 伊藤君AtoE. Started the movie but I'm kinda unsure about finishing it. The drama seems to just kind of end, but I've put an hour into the film and it's just a re-hash of the drama from a more boring perspective. On the one hand, wow they actually re-shot all of this at different locations instead of doing a clip show... on the other hand it is basically still a clip show!
--Episode 24 of Dogen's Japanese Phonetics course was a test. I scored a 75%. The last episode that was a test was episode 10. I took that test over a month ago and only scored 60%. So I'm glad that I seem to be improving, at least at hearing pitch distinctions (I have no idea where my production of them is lol)

Esperanto:
--Wednesday was fairly busy for me, so I only did listening practice for eo.

Spanish:
--I started a new podcast called Cuentos para irse a dormir. It is a tremendously adorable podcast where a father tells five minute stories to his very young daughter. She is so cute when she pipes up with the animal sounds or just random comments it literally makes me tear up.
--I want to get back to watching Juana Inés at some point, but the episodes are kind of long, and that kind of discourages me from starting a new one at my level. So I started searching for shows I've seen other people mention on this forum and started searching to see how long the episodes are. I wound up settling on La Casa de las flores. Which, despite time concerns, I am now possibly binge watching because oh my god.

Something I'm thinking about a lot this week is trying to incorporate some amount of shadowing into my routine, but I don't really know where to start.

For Japanese, I want to ensure that I shadow something that is in standard dialect, but I also want to shadow something where people speak naturally, and most speakers are female. Like, in a lot of Japanese shows, people do not speak naturally. For example, in 伊藤君AtoE, a character actually uses the honorific 女史 for the main character which... wtf.

And for Spanish, I kind of need to choose a dialect to base my speech on. Most of the people around me speak Caribbean Spanish, but it also seems that this dialect is kind of very low prestige, so I wonder if it is a bad idea to chose to try to emulate it. Like, so long as I learn to understand Caribbean Spanish, if I actually speak a different type of Spanish, it might be better if I ever get a chance to travel...

Maybe I am over thinking this.
1 x

User avatar
Jaleel10
Blue Belt
Posts: 534
Joined: Thu Sep 14, 2017 6:44 am
Location: Springbok, South Africa
Languages: Afrikaans (N), English (N)
Spanish (Advanced-B2)
x 963
Contact:

Re: devilyoudont's Japanese/Spanish/Esperanto log

Postby Jaleel10 » Mon Sep 24, 2018 11:12 am

devilyoudont wrote: I wound up settling on La Casa de las flores. Which, despite time concerns, I am now possibly binge watching because oh my god.


It's sooooo good, right??? I've watched quite a few tv shows in my short journey with Spanish but no group of characters/actors compare to those of La Casa de las Flores.

And for Spanish, I kind of need to choose a dialect to base my speech on. Most of the people around me speak Caribbean Spanish, but it also seems that this dialect is kind of very low prestige, so I wonder if it is a bad idea to chose to try to emulate it. Like, so long as I learn to understand Caribbean Spanish, if I actually speak a different type of Spanish, it might be better if I ever get a chance to travel...

Maybe I am over thinking this.


I think Caribbean Spanish (especially Dominican and Cuban), stereotypical Mexican, and stereotypical Argentinian/Uruguayan accents are very easy to imitate because the intonation is so animated and cartoonish in a sense. Right now as I am typing this, I am imitating my Argentinian friend in the most offensive way possible "Con vos ya no quiero hablar más" haha. He hates when I do that :P

I think I am over thinking it as well. Many times I have been told that my intonation and prosody is a bit off i.e. not Spanish sounding while at the same time people tell me that I am perfectly understandable and they don't see anything majorly wrong with my accents other than a few sounds. Ugh, one day I'll master my accent, ¡joder!

I don't remember when but Iguanamon said that accent addition isn't something to be worried about now because our goal is to learn Spanish first, after that you can play with accents. If your concern is how you would be perceived, I'd say just try and nail all the Spanish sounds and to not bother adopting a specific because most (if not all) Spanish speakers can understand EVERY accent - it's amazing. I think comprehending those accents will be more important for you right now. Then again, I live in a country with 0 Spanish so I am the worse person to give an opinion on this lol. Hopefully an experienced learner can chime in on this.
1 x

User avatar
devilyoudont
Blue Belt
Posts: 571
Joined: Tue Jun 26, 2018 1:34 am
Location: Philadelphia
Languages: EN (N), EO (C), JA (B), ES (A)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=16424
x 1829
Contact:

Re: devilyoudont's Japanese/Spanish/Esperanto log

Postby devilyoudont » Sun Sep 30, 2018 10:48 pm

Struggling with overtime and still feeling a mild depression. It's been hard to come and update my log, but I have been doing things.

Jaleel10 wrote:It's sooooo good, right??? I've watched quite a few tv shows in my short journey with Spanish but no group of characters/actors compare to those of La Casa de las Flores.


OMG yes I'm completely obsessed with it lol

Honestly, I'm much more concerned about being understandable than having a native-like accent. My main concern with learning a specifically Caribbean accent would be: 1) finding materials for shadowing, 2) spanish speakers of other regions not understanding me if I was able to travel in the future 3) Spanish speakers of other regions not liking the accent and projecting that onto me...

Japanese:

Extensive Reading:
宇宙人のしゅくだい--Up to page 53 (Not sure exactly where I ended last week)

Watching:
Japanese with Ja Subtitles
--伊藤君AtoE -- about 15 minutes
English
--Dogen's Japanese Phonetics ep25

Listening:
Music
Podcasts (2hr 45min)
--恋愛心理学-知りたい!相手の気持ち
--News in Slow Japanese
--エッチな女子会
--朗読男女5分で聞けるオリジナル物語
--朗読ナイトシアター

Gaming
Animal Crossing Pocket Camp

Translation
Translated 1 request on r/translator

Struggles:
--Made practically no progress on finishing out 伊藤君AtoE
--I didn't do a calculation for where my comprehension was, but I hit a story in 宇宙人のしゅくだい called 雪のふるところ that just didn't grab me in any way, and also I feel like I missed the point of this story despite understanding most of the words. It might just be because I'm feeling stressed. Maybe if I come back to it another time, I would get more out of it. This has happened with a few of the stories I have returned to in Spanish.
--I didn't do cards of any kind in any language this week.

Successes:
--Found a few new podcasts to occupy my time for the time being. 朗読 seems to be a useful term for finding podcasts I might like.

Esperanto:

Extensive Reading:
From Virino ĉe la landlimo: started Drasta kuracado (read 6 pages)

Listening:
Podcasts (1 hr 18min)
--Aminda Radio Esperanto
--Pola Retradio en Esperanto

Writing:
Just chatting with friends

Struggles:
--I didn't finish out a play this week for some reason. Probably too much overtime? I don't remember.

Successes:
--This play that I failed to finish reading is maybe my favorite in the book so far.

Spanish:

Watching:
In Spanish with Es Subs (62 min)
--La casa de las flores episode 4 + 5

Listening:
Music
Podcasts (1hr 46 min)
--SER historia
--Cienciaes.com
--SpanishPodcast.net

Struggles:
--I was too tired and basically just watched TV after work for Spanish this week.

Successes:
--I found a Spanish language radio station that I can listen to while driving to and from work on my Spanish days!
4 x

User avatar
devilyoudont
Blue Belt
Posts: 571
Joined: Tue Jun 26, 2018 1:34 am
Location: Philadelphia
Languages: EN (N), EO (C), JA (B), ES (A)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=16424
x 1829
Contact:

Re: devilyoudont's Japanese/Spanish/Esperanto log

Postby devilyoudont » Wed Oct 03, 2018 12:45 am

Japanese:

Extensive Reading:
宇宙人のしゅくだい (6 pages)

Watching:
Japanese with no subs
--鋼の錬金術師 Live action Movie (2hr 14min)
(Japanese with Japanese subs)
--伊藤君AtoE (Finished)
English
Japanese Phonetics 27 + 28

Listening:
Podcasts (1hr 20min)
--News in Slow Japanese
--相手の気持ち
--朗読ナイトシアター

Gaming
Animal Crossing Pocket Camp

SRS
Reviewed 92 cards

Struggles:
--The story I read this week in 宇宙人のしゅくだい was also pretty difficult to me, and so I wound up only reading the one.
--I thought I had anki working correctly since I reset my phone, but I didn't. No sound would play, kind of a crucial detail since I am using this deck for pitch accent. After many attempts over the last few days, I finally got ankidroid to sync correctly. The problem was probably due to the size of the deck I am using. Anyway, this reduced my flashcard reviews this week.

Successes:
--Finished 伊藤君AtoE! Overall, I liked this series this series but felt the end was pretty weak. If you watch it, the movie probably isn't worth trudging thru, as something like 3/4ths of it is a re-shoot of the TV show, but from a less interesting perspective, and missing most of the most interesting moments.
--I saw that Netflix had the live action version of 鋼の錬金術師. That's my favorite of any anime TV show that I've seen. There were no Japanese subtitles available, so I just decided to take the plunge and hope that having seen the anime with English subs in the last two years would allow me to follow along even when talk of human sacrifices and equivalent exchange started to go over my head. Well, I was able to follow along, and on a much deeper level than I had anticipated. Sure, there were a few scenes in particular that were over my head, but in most scenes, I was understanding a lot more than just understanding the gist. This is especially surprising because I typically even watch stuff in English with subtitles due to my shitty ears sometimes missing words even in my native language. Anyway, I thought it was an ok adaptation. I thought Ed and Envy looked terrible, but everything else seemed spot on to me. I thought they did a good job connecting a bunch of essential scenes from the TV show in an incredibly abridged format. Not a perfect adaptation by any means, but perfectly serviceable if you just want to see the characters brought to life.
2 x

User avatar
devilyoudont
Blue Belt
Posts: 571
Joined: Tue Jun 26, 2018 1:34 am
Location: Philadelphia
Languages: EN (N), EO (C), JA (B), ES (A)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=16424
x 1829
Contact:

Re: devilyoudont's Japanese/Spanish/Esperanto log

Postby devilyoudont » Sun Oct 07, 2018 3:00 pm

Esperanto:

Listening:
Podcasts (about 1 hr)
--Kern Punkto
--Pola Retradio en Esperanto

Writing:
Chatrooms @ telegramo.org

Struggles:
--I'm realizing that Wednesdays are not the best day for me to get reading done, because we usually visit my future mother-in-law every other week on Wednesday.

Successes:
--I did a lot more chatting than usual, which was nice.

Spanish:

Extensive Reading:
faneo -- Webcomics in Spanish. I've known that this project was coming for a while. The old Spanish webcomic page at subcultura.es came down in January of this year, and people were trying to put together a successor for a while. This finally launched last week and I spent some time just clicking around and looking thru the first chapter of a lot of different projects. I may be able to make some recommendations next week :3

Watching:
All I watched was youtube stuff this week. No subtitles so my understanding was fairly low. Two channels that have a language focus:
Lengua Larga
Makeaventuras

Listening:
Podcasts (2hr 3min)
-Cienciaes.com
-SpanishPodcast.net
-SER Historia
-Españolistos

Gaming
Animal Crossing Pocket Camp

Struggles:
--Regret not watching Las casas de las flores this week :cry:
--Still not back onto my flashcard habit
--I have kind of mixed feelings on Españolistos. On the one hand, this podcast is more or less at a better level for me than by native for native content like SER Historia, but the guy on Españolisto has a fairly noticeable accent. I don't believe that an accent means that someone doesn't have a good grasp of the language, but I also wonder what I will end up absorbing. I will probably try to be more focused on the native speaker. Given that the content is more appropriate for my level, I'm able to listen to it for a longer period of time without needing a break, and I feel like that is probably more than offsets Nate's accent.

Successes:
--I love comics, so I'm excited to be able to use them in my Spanish study again.
--Given how low my comprehension still is without subtitles, I think I did an ok job with youtube content. It's funny how you can get absorbed in watching a youtube channel much more than a podcast, even tho the visuals are more or less just a talking head, so why should it be more absorbing??
2 x

User avatar
devilyoudont
Blue Belt
Posts: 571
Joined: Tue Jun 26, 2018 1:34 am
Location: Philadelphia
Languages: EN (N), EO (C), JA (B), ES (A)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=16424
x 1829
Contact:

Re: devilyoudont's Japanese/Spanish/Esperanto log

Postby devilyoudont » Thu Oct 11, 2018 10:47 pm

Japanese:

Extensive Reading:
More of 宇宙人のしゅくだい

Watching:
Youtube (In English)
--Dogen's Japanese Phonetics 29-31

Listening:
--News in Slow Japanese
--相手の気持ち
--朗読ナイトシアター

SRS:
Reviewed 86 cards

Struggles:
--Oops, picked a random thing on Netflix to watch in Japanese. Turns out it was a silent film!
--I feel like this week just slipped by me.

Successes:
--Closing in on the end of the Japanese Phonetics series. Only remaining episode is the final test. There are more videos about correct articulation of Japanese consonants and vowels. Might choose a few videos of sounds that I have trouble producing (h before i, n after i, etc)

Esperanto:

Extensive Reading:
Finished Drasta kuracado

Listening: (About an hour)
--Pola Retradio en Esperanto
--Kern Punkto

Writing:
--Chatting

Struggles:
--Was planning to watch some youtubers and I forgot.

Successes:
--Back onto reading. I was initially liking this play more but then hated it again by the end. I'm more or less just reading this book because I have it and to say I did at this point, because I think I legitimately liked 2 plays out of 6 so far.
1 x

User avatar
devilyoudont
Blue Belt
Posts: 571
Joined: Tue Jun 26, 2018 1:34 am
Location: Philadelphia
Languages: EN (N), EO (C), JA (B), ES (A)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=16424
x 1829
Contact:

Re: devilyoudont's Japanese/Spanish/Esperanto log

Postby devilyoudont » Mon Oct 15, 2018 1:19 am

Spanish:

Intensive Reading:
El murciélago from guiainfantil.com I would up starting over with this one since I left off half finished with making flashcards from this in the past.

Extensive Reading:
@ faneo.es
--Protectora: Una revisión del mito de Medusa
--Slowplay

Watching:
La casa de las flores

Listening:
Podcasts
-Cienciaes.com
-SpanishPodcast.net
-SER Historia
-Españolistos

Gaming
--Animal Crossing Pocket Camp

SRS:
Made 40 cards
Reviewed 7 cards

Struggles:
This week really just completely got away from me... It flew by so quickly, and I didn't do nearly so much as I wanted.

Successes:
Thrilled to be reading comics, and watching La casa de las flores again. Also heard it's getting more seasons!
1 x

User avatar
devilyoudont
Blue Belt
Posts: 571
Joined: Tue Jun 26, 2018 1:34 am
Location: Philadelphia
Languages: EN (N), EO (C), JA (B), ES (A)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=16424
x 1829
Contact:

Re: devilyoudont's Japanese/Spanish/Esperanto log

Postby devilyoudont » Sun Oct 21, 2018 7:55 pm

For a little while, I am gonna try posting 1 log a week, just to free up some extra time.

Japanese:

Intensive Reading:
福娘童話集
--雪女

Watching:
Netflix (Ja with Ja subs)
--アグレッシブ烈子 1-7

Listening:
Podcasts (2 hr 51 min)
--エッチな女子会
--News in Slow Japanese
--朗読ナイトシアター

SRS:
Reviewed 119 cards.

Esperanto:

Extensive Reading:
Virino ĉe la landlimo
--La morto de Kabir

Listening:
Podcasts (about 25 min)
--Pola retradio en Esperanto

Writing
Just chatting

Spanish:
Intensive Reading:
Guia infantil
--El Múcaro

Extensive Reading:
The first chapter of three random Chat Stories on the Leemur app
Kept up to date on comics I previously started following at faneo.es

Watching:
Netflix (es with es subs)
--La casa de las flores

Listening:
Podcasts: (3 hr 20 min)
--SER historia
--Españolistas
--Cienciaes.com
--SpanishPodcast.net

Struggles:
--So my local Esperanto club died. I guess it's up to me to decide whether or not I want to try to revive things, or let it lay dead. I'm not much of a leader, and I wonder if I should put the time into something else.
--for most of this week, I felt like I was just for some unknown reason in a completely non-receptive state of mind. Even material that was previously not very challenging for me, became impossible.
Successes:
--I did an experiment this week. Basically, I wanted to determine if I was just understanding TV shows from the visual context. I compared my comprehension of a random tv show in French (A language close to my native language and languages I am learning), in Finnish (a language totally different from my native language, and any languages I am learning), in Spanish (a language I am studying but am weak at), and in Japanese (the language besides Esperanto I can hold a conversation in). I checked my accuracy by rewatching all with English subtitles.

The results:
--Finish: Less than 1% understanding. I even failed to understand Finnish loan words. I might have correctly understood 2 lines of dialog total.
--French: I understood a lot of words, but these words never collated into phrases, and I still failed to understand anything.
--Spanish: My understanding was fairly high. Lots of missing words. But, I understood every scene, but 1.
--Japanese: Word for word understanding of greater than 50%, understanding from context of practically every sentence. Understood every scene. Failed to understand about 1 sentence a scene.

So, in the end, this ended up being a self esteem boost. Because I thought I would be able to understand a lot more in the French and Finnish shows just from context, which means that whatever I understand in Japanese and Spanish, I am actually understanding.
5 x

User avatar
devilyoudont
Blue Belt
Posts: 571
Joined: Tue Jun 26, 2018 1:34 am
Location: Philadelphia
Languages: EN (N), EO (C), JA (B), ES (A)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=16424
x 1829
Contact:

Re: devilyoudont's Japanese/Spanish/Esperanto log

Postby devilyoudont » Tue Oct 30, 2018 1:03 am

Japanese:

Extensive Reading:
Webcomics
--フェリスマンの国

Pixivチャットストーリー
--夏の終わり


Watching:
Netflix(JA audio with JA subs)
--アグレッシブ烈子 8-10

Youtube (JA audio no subs)
--Yuka Channel (3 videos)
--tarres (1 video)

Listening:
Podcasts (2 hr 30 min)
--朗読ナイトシアター
--恋愛心理学♡知りたい!相手の気持ち
--朗読男女~5分で聞けるオリジナル物語
--メリケン!サックリドラマ

SRS:
Reviewed 158 cards.

Esperanto:

Listening:
Podcasts (around 1 hr)
--Kern Punkto
--Pola Retradio en Esperanto

Writing:
Chatting

Spanish:

Watching:
Netflix (Es audio with Es subs)
--La casa de las flores

Listening:
Podcasts (2 hr 8 min)
--SpanishPodcast.net
--Españolistos
--Ciencia.es
--SER Historia

Struggles:
--Midway thru the week, my I just got too burned out from work, and didn't attempt to do any flashcards or reading in Spanish.

Successes:
--I had an opportunity to help out some komencantoj this week, and that is something which I always really enjoy with Esperanto.
--Finished アグレッシブ烈子! I actually liked this show a lot. I feel dumb for getting invested in the character relationships for this kind of show though.
--Finished 朗読ナイトシアター! Started another podcast called メリケン!サックリドラマ which doesn't have a very large archive, but seems to be currently uploading.
0 x


Return to “Language logs”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 2 guests