The Kuji Khronicles - JA, PT

[kujichagulia]

This past weekend was quite busy for me, and the little language time that I did have was taken over by HelloTalk and Tandem. I have six or seven different conversations in Portuguese/English constantly going on, and in addition to that, I've been contacted by a few Japanese in both apps. Right now, I have probably three Japanese/English conversations flowing. It can be time-consuming if left unchecked.

But I will say that the apps have been very good for me. I'm finding that I can communicate better in Portuguese than I think. I'm chatting with a lady in Brasília, and she invited me to send an audio message in Portuguese, so I did. I warned her beforehand that my speaking ability is pretty bad, since I never speak Portuguese with anybody. After listening to the message, she said that my pronunciation was really good, better than a foreign guy she knows in Brasília who has lived there for three years already. She might have just been trying to encourage me, but hey... I'll take it. It seems that whatever I'm doing is working, so I should just keep at it.

I had a similar story with Japanese. I'm chatting with a lady in Okinawa - just text - and in the middle of our conversation, she says, "For a minute I completely forgot that you were American. It's like I'm chatting with a Japanese person!" I told my wife what she said, and she said, "She's probably just trying to be nice. Let me take a look at what you've been writing." So I showed her, and she said, "Wow... this really is good! Why can't you speak as well as you write?" My wife is the type of person that you really have to impress in order to get a compliment from her, so I'm taking that as high praise. That episode confirmed something that I've been thinking lately: I need to focus more on listening and speaking in Japanese, because my reading and writing is very good for my level.

[kujichagulia]

Interesting Friday night last week. My wife was out of town, so I finally had a chance to go to a Brazilian-type restaurant in my city run by a Japanese-Brazilian woman. I went there, and the waitresses looked Japanese to me. So I said, "Party of one" in Japanese as is the custom, and a waitress seated me. When I ordered, the waitress was speaking choppy Japanese, so I asked her if she was Brazilian and she said yes. She didn't look to be in the best of moods, so I didn't try to speak Portuguese at that time.

A minute after that, a Caucasian guy walks in and walks into the little store that is attached to the restaurant. There, he starts speaking to the owner in Portuguese. He later sits down and orders something, and then he sees me and asks something like, "Você é brasileiro?" I say, "Não, sou americano." Surprised, the guy says, "Você fala português?" "Só um pouco. Estudo português." My ability to speak Portuguese kind of broke down from there, partly because I was nervous and partly because I'm not used to speaking Portuguese in a live conversation. No problem; the guy, who's from Paraná, knew a bit of English, and since he's been in Japan longer than I have, he knew a lot of Japanese, too. So we're speaking in a mix of English, Japanese and Portuguese.

Our waitress comes out a few minutes later, and he talks to her and says that I'm an American. Impressed, the waitress speaks to me in English, "How many years in Japan?" Hahaha. So the waitress then joins our little creole of a conversation, which becomes mainly English and Portuguese because she's been in Japan only two months.

Finally, at the end of my meal, the owner comes out, and the waitress tells her about me, and she seems to be really impressed with me for some reason. She seemed thrilled that I was an American who could speak Portuguese, even if it was choppy and horrible. She talked and talked to me in Portuguese at native speed. Of course I couldn't understand that much, so I'd say "Que?" (I'm not even sure if that's the right way to say that in Portuguese). She would then repeat it in Japanese, and when I understood, she'd go right back into Portuguese. She said she wants to improve her English, so she asked for my phone number just in case. She also gave me a free can of feijão preto from her store.

I was a bit frustrated that I couldn't speak better Portuguese; I had a hard time making sentences and sometimes I had to resort to just single words. But they all understood that I was making an effort to learn, and overall we made ourselves understood and had a good conversation.

[Tristano]

Ehi @Kuji funny that you mentioned the TV shows. I learned English that way (and speaking it later) without ever opening a grammar book (thing that is pretty visible from what I write lol).

But hey, I was thinking that with my English lessons in the high schools I could easily do it. The book is on the table. The cat is under the table. The dog is next to the book that is on the table that is on the mouse that is inside the cat. I know English!

Reality: "hi, waahualihamlamlamlaishlaization? Zzap bro?"

Me: oO

But hey, English was not Chinese. It's full of shared vocabulary. I started to watch movies and series with Italian subtitles. I started to recognize more and more. Later on I could watch series with English subtitles and after without subs at all.

Provided you don't cause suicidal tendencies to yourself by watching awful novelas but chose things you would watch in your native language just for fun, it can be a way to go

[kujichagulia]

@Tristano - Thank you for the comments and advice. Yeah, I could watch something for fun, definitely, even if I don't understand 90% of it. But I do think it would be effective, for me, to make sure I take it easy with TV shows at the moment and build up my vocabulary and, in the case of Portuguese, grammar. Maybe do some vocabulary work, then reward myself with a little TV, is a good way to go.

For me, it's mainly a way to keep my stress low and keep frustration away. Maybe most people can watch a TV show with only 10% comprehension and think, Wow, I know this word! I know that word! And it is satisfying for them. I'm like that, sometimes - see my last post about the Brazilian restaurant; I didn't know a lot of what they were saying in Portuguese, but I was happy with what I could understand and speak - but a lot of the time I focus too much on the 90% I don't understand. Then I get frustrated. It's going to take forever to understand all of this! AAAHHHH!. That's why I want to limit myself at this point and do somewhat easier tasks.

[Elenia]

That restaurant event sounds like a wonderful experience! Getting to speak one (or two!) of your TLs in a pressure-free, encouraging environment! I'm glad you got to experience that!

[kujichagulia]

That restaurant event sounds like a wonderful experience! Getting to speak one (or two!) of your TLs in a pressure-free, encouraging environment! I'm glad you got to experience that!

Thank you. I was hoping to use a bit of Portuguese while I was there, but I didn't expect what happened to happen. That was very nice!

Portuguese is more of a "hobby" language for me, but that experience certainly gives me motivation to keep doing more.

[kujichagulia]

I don't write much in my log nowadays, and that's mainly a good thing. I tend to write about my problems and struggles in language learning, but I'm not writing much because everything is basically okay. I don't struggle with how to study any more, thanks to all of you here at this site who have taken the time to give me advice and help me with my journey. Regarding techniques, I know what I need to do to improve my language skills.

The main problem - really, the only problem - I have is making sure I dedicate time to language learning. It can be a struggle, though, because I have a lot to do. Besides working, of course, I'm often at the fitness club. I also have started playing basketball with two clubs in the area. I've decided to try to become a writer, so I'm working on building up my writing skills. I'm getting more into cooking, so I often look for recipes. I'm reading more about working on my social skills and conversational skills, and how to build and improve relationships - an area I feel I'm sorely lacking in. On top of that, there are all the things that go with being married. Fitting language learning into that schedule can be hectic, but I know it can be done, and I'm working on ways to improve that.

It sounds strange, but one reason I struggle is because I give myself too many tasks to do for Japanese and Portuguese. On my to-do list, I write something such as this:
* Read Japanese
* Write in Japanese journal
* Watch Easy Japanese video series on YouTube
* Listen to 20 min of Japanese
* NHK News Web Easy
...

It seems like a harmless to-do list, but what I end up doing is focusing on finishing each of those tasks as soon as possible. The thought of trying to do all of those things on the to-do list makes me stressed for some odd reason. I'm finding it's better to just list this:

* Japanese, 45 min

There... less stressful. And it doesn't really matter too much what I do in that time, as long as it is in Japanese. If I do that, I think I'll be fine.

[EarthBerry]

* * * * *
JAPANESE
2017年1月12日(木)
TOPIC: 未来で何をしたいですか？(What do you want to do in the future?)
いろいろな言語が話せるようになりたい。今では日本語とポルトガル語を勉強していて、未来で他の言語も習いたい。
旅行ももっとしたい。行ったことがない国はまだ多いから。
私の仕事はいいだけど、私にもっといい仕事があるかなと思っている。でもその前に、日本語が上手にならなければいけない。

Hello there! I know this post is from January but I saw you asked for corrections and well, better late than never いい is an い-adjective so it doesn't take だ in だけど I'm also studying Japanese so I'll try and visit here often 日本語の勉強、頑張ってください！

[kujichagulia]

Hello there! I know this post is from January but I saw you asked for corrections and well, better late than never いい is an い-adjective so it doesn't take だ in だけど I'm also studying Japanese so I'll try and visit here often 日本語の勉強、頑張ってください！

添削ありがとうございました！私はいつもミスばかりなので、添削をもらって嬉しい！

[kujichagulia]

Today I unfortunately had to delete my HelloTalk account. I was chatting with a woman from Brazil, and all of a sudden she sent me a very inappropriate picture - or so I thought. Right after I received that picture, she became really angry with me, accusing me of sending her an inappropriate picture. Of course, I hadn't, so I tried to explain that I didn't and that I thought she had sent me a strange picture as well, but she blocked me. I came to the conclusion that my account was somehow hacked, or perhaps HelloTalk itself.

At first, I sent a message to the HelloTalk Team explaining what had happened and asking them to look into the problem. After that, I began to wonder if that lady was going to report me for abuse. I didn't really have faith that HelloTalk would believe me over her, and I didn't really want to be bothered with the hassle of trying to prove myself anyway, so I just went ahead and deleted the account. Even if HelloTalk sided with me, who knows what would happen again in the future? If someone or something could just hack into HelloTalk and send inappropriate pictures and make it look like I did it, then why continue using that app?

So, just like that, I'm done with HelloTalk. It's really unfortunate, though. It was a good six months of language practice. I was able to chat with a lot of people in Japanese and Portuguese, and I had a few ongoing conversations that were very interesting.

It's not all bad, though. I'm fortunate that recently the person from Brazil I chatted with the most on HelloTalk and I switched our chat from HelloTalk to WhatsApp, so I don't have to give up that relationship. In addition, I still have Tandem on my phone, and I still use it. I chat with people in Japanese and Portuguese there, too. There are not as many people in the Tandem community as there are using HelloTalk, but there's enough. And to be honest, I was getting overwhelmed with the number of people contacting me in both apps.