Xe-Chan's Official Polyglotism Language Log (East Asian Language Focus)

[Xelian]

I have admittedly been slacking. I'm in the midst of a move and taking an online writing class (pretty spur of the moment type of deal), so I have to spare a lot of time for those things. I've hardly studied languages this week. But I have an update of what I have actually been able to achieve. I'm starting to think that a language schedule would be helpful. Once you get a routine, everything gets easier to fit in.

January.JPG

Key: Korean = Purple; Japanese = Dark blue; Swedish = Light blue; Mandarin = Pink

I'm still liking the format, it's created a really interesting BuJo. I am also proud that I've been able to incorporate a whole lot of Korean into my language practice.

Report for January 13th - 19th:
Korean: 40+ minutes
Japanese: 0 minutes
Swedish: 0 minutes
Mandarin: 0 minutes

Report for January 20th - 26th:
Korean: 20+ minutes
Japanese: 0 minutes
Swedish: 20+ minutes
Mandarin: 0 minutes

Report for January 27th - February 2nd:
Korean: 30+ minutes
Japanese: 30+ minutes
Swedish: 20+ minutes
Mandarin: 0+ minutes

Report for January:
Korean: 120+ minutes
Japanese: 40+ minutes
Swedish: 50+ minutes
Mandarin: 20+ minutes

This isn't a whole lot of time over the span of a month. I am hoping that I can pick up the slack a little bit in March, but I will try to do as much as I can with the rest of this month too.

Detailed Report (in order of time spent on each):

Korean: The LingoDeer Korean is fabulous, I feel like I am solidifying a lot of basics.

Swedish: I'm enjoying reading svt Nyheter to keep up with my Swedish, though some articles are a little bit useless, I find myself remembering what I read a whole lot easier than any news I read or hear in English. So that's interesting.

Japanese: I am really slacking on Japanese, but I am hoping some motivation sparks soon. I've been painfully inching through a single chapter in Tobira. And that is pretty much all.

Mandarin: I am starting to dislike the Mandarin for LingoDeer because I am understanding without actually learning. For example, I know the Japanese color kanji, and so I instantly am going to understand most of the colors without knowing how to say them in Chinese, and it doesn't make me inspired to learn the difficult pronunciation. It's a real problem, but at least I understand? I'm thinking about switching to my Pimsluer Mandarin tapes, as these force you to learn how to speak rather than understanding hanzi (which, I already can understand a certain fraction of due to my Japanese studies).

A goal for the rest of February is going to be finding the time to fit 10 minutes of motivated study into my daily routine. Perhaps I can do it in the morning, rather than right before bed as I'm falling asleep at my desk.

[Xelian]

Hi everyone! Today I'm going to be making a more simple than usual update post without an image.

I have been taking this writing class online and it was suggested we read "Writing Down the Bones" by Natalie Goldberg.

Something about it completely changed everything. I got to page 11 and suddenly I was totally motivated to pick up Japanese again. And I think that's because she is telling us that we don't need to fear anything other than not practicing. If we practice, we can be good at anything. And it's true, all the hours I've spent learning other languages has allowed me to be able to journal in a second language, whenever I want.

And I think that's what struck me. I've made a habit of journalling in English since I was about 10 years old (and prior to that I would write occasionally outside of school). And journalling is considered practicing. Somehow. It never occurred to me that people actually use journalling to improve their writing, it just occurred to me that I wanted to pour my heart out, write observations, or document my days just to get it all out of my system.

So if I apply that to other languages, (and make it something that isn't a chore) I'll have solid practice. And that's what I did tonight for Japanese! I'm really excited to see what other motivation I get from learning about writing. I feel like a lot of times I accidentally take it as something separate, but in the end, a language is a means of communication, and I do that regularly. Applied to any other language, you're doing the exact same thing.

But yeah, knocked out that 10 minute minimum requirement goal for Japanese tonight! I have been taking a break for a long time but I know I'll always go back to it. My New Year's resolution has already fallen through, I'm about a month behind if you count up all the days I missed. Whoops.

But it's okay! Because I started again. And now I will prioritize practicing over all else.

Anyone else have something to add? So much of my motivation was sapped from me just because I refuse practice, which is strange because I love practicing!

Anyway, I have a new goal with Japanese : Fill the journal.

I have this journal that I bought on my first trip to Japan (2013). I bought it at the Pokemon Center in Tokyo. That was one of my favorite memories of all time. It took me 3 years to decide what to do with the journal. Which is funny because the "lines" or ... dot boxes? I guess? ... are specifically for writing in Japanese. I finally started to journal in Japanese in it (2016).

I wrote a total of:
2016 - 29 entries
2017 - 12 entries
2018 - 7 entries

And this year I've got only 1 entry so far.

So what happened? College. It sucked. Majorly. Even though I was going to school for something I loved. I tried really hard to use my Japanese I had learned at school during my school breaks, and that's where the biggest chunk of my entries came from. But as I got up to higher and higher level classes, I felt like I wasn't good enough at Japanese. I lost motivation for it. I felt like I lost everything. I was writing essays in Japanese for one of the classes, I felt like that was sufficient practice. Time and time again I've been discouraged in other ways. I kept trying to post positively here, but I'm here to tell you it was a facade of what I wanted my passionate studying to look like.

Regardless. That's over now and I get to fill in the rest of these pages. I'm pretty excited!

Thanks for reading,
~Xelian

[Xelian]

So I don't want to post a picture of my BuJo before completing the month anymore, I feel like it is over complicating my posts. BUT, I am refining how I go about filling it out and using it. For now it is still the same as usual, it takes 5 minutes of one skill to get a dot for that skill and 10 minutes of any two skills to get a corner of the box filled. But I am being a lot more aware of how much time I actually spend on each day. I removed the "10 mins" checkbox from my BuJo. Previously, I likely had studied more than I reported, as each box only had the capacity of 10 minutes per day. Now, I am just recording those extra minutes so that the reports are more accurate. (I don't know what I was thinking??)

The past week was a heavily Japanese week. In fact, it was the only language I studied for more than 10 minutes. Here's the report:

Report for February 17th - 23rd:
Korean: 10 minutes
Japanese: 65 minutes
Swedish: 0 minutes
Mandarin: 0 minutes

This upcoming week I'm planning to add in at least Korean and Swedish. Mandarin is being put off so much because I ran into problems with it... I wonder when I'll get motivation back for that one. Maybe I can slip in some pimsleur soon.

Even though I didn't do a whole lot of studying in early February, I surpassed January's Japanese results in under a week. So we are getting somewhere with that!

I wrote 6 entries in my Japanese journal this week, almost as many as I had written all of last year. Now that I am falling into the habit of writing everyday in there, I think it will stay that way for a good while! Though they say it takes around a month to form a true habit. We shall see. I'm looking to start reading a manga series, but I feel like I'm not ready for that kind of commitment just yet. Additionally, I'm going to have trouble fitting in daily language studies once I start my new job in a couple weeks. I really hope I can balance it out. I hope for enough energy to do so!!!

As always, thanks for reading!

[Xelian]

Hello!

So everything is going great! I've finally got a routine going (though it's still at night). I've been journaling in Japanese everyday for 17 days now, and I don't intend to break my streak. I've also got a language exchange buddy as of late for practicing Mandarin, and that's going pretty well! Here's a map of my progress so far in my BuJo:

Feb_March.jpg

February 24th - March 2nd:
Korean: 0 minutes
Japanese: 145 minutes
Swedish: 0 minutes
Mandarin: 0 minutes

So I basically only focused on Japanese for the past couple of weeks according to the BuJo, but since February 19th I've been documenting all minutes I spend on each language, so even though I don't have Korean listed on the BuJo or Japanese/Chinese, sometimes I'll add an extra 5 mins per day, so that's why the reports are important for calculating if I meet my weekly goals. For Feb 24th-March 2nd, however, I basically only did work with Japanese.

Report for February:
Korean: 30+ minutes
Japanese: 125 minutes
Swedish: 10+ minutes
Mandarin: 0 minutes

For March I believe I'll be able to confidently state how many minutes I spent on everything. And it should be a lot better results than February was (I took a good long break). The BuJo in the end is just a tracker for what languages I did more than 5 minutes on for any given day. It's a little more complicated to do it like this, but I think it is motivating to try and fill out those boxes. More on my March experience in the next post!

[Xelian]

Hello again! Just a quick update on the past two weeks.

March 3rd - 9th:
Korean: 0 minutes
Japanese: 105 minutes
Swedish: 0 minutes
Mandarin: 50 minutes

March 10th - March 16th:
Korean: 10 minutes
Japanese: 40 minutes
Swedish: 0 minutes
Mandarin: 35 minutes

The red is for languages I didn't meet my goal times for and the green are ones that I did.
(Goals: Japanese, Korean - 40 mins, Mandarin, Swedish - 20 mins)

LingoDeer Chinese coupled with a language exchange partner is actually really motivating and effective for studying Mandarin. That is where the majority of the Mandarin minutes are coming from. What we will do is, typically I have a lesson in the LingoDeer app which I can pass most of the way (thanks to knowing kanji that are "the same" to me in hanzi) until the part where they ask me to say a sentence or type a sentence. At that point I will ask my language exchange partner to just send an audio file that I can use to practice. This has seemingly helped me get through the lessons without being stupid about it like I was before. I will also give him help with Japanese when he has a question or sends something that's incorrect in Japanese (which I will kindly help correct).

As far as Japanese goes, I do count time spent helping my language exchange partner with his Japanese issues (but only will count that for about 5 minutes) but most of the minutes are coming from my daily Japanese journal which, I've been keeping up for the most part. I had written something for 22 consecutive days, from February 19th - March 13th, and then March 14th I didn't feel up for writing. So I broke my streak, but I'm still planning to write as many days as I can manage. Most of these days I counted about 10 minutes for, even if it took a little longer, because I want to get an accurate representation of my quality study time, vs the in-between times where I'm looking up kanji or something that's not really study conducive.

The Korean I am mostly using LingoDeer, but obviously not a whole lot. I am thinking of starting a new Korean drama, but, of course I'm not going to be counting a whole hour of listening for every episode I watch (I use subtitles). But I think it can count for a little bit, especially if I couple it with some other language learning tool.

I'm hoping to pick up a Swedish novel at some point, but svt Nyheter and Memrise should be sufficient for this upcoming week. I don't have work today or tomorrow so I'm going to try and fit in my weekly goals in that time. 20 minutes isn't too high of steaks.

The reason last week was a little less productive in terms of language study is I've finally started my new job and it is often long shifts. It isn't always everyday though, so I think I will be able to balance everything (hopefully this week).

My new goals are to figure out a better Korean and Swedish routine, and to maintain my minimums for Mandarin and Japanese.

Talk to you all next time! Thanks for reading.

[Xelian]

Hello everyone!

Here's the past two weeks and a final report for March:

March 17th - March 23rd:
Korean: 50 minutes
Japanese: 140 minutes
Swedish: 35 minutes
Mandarin: 20 minutes

March 24th - March 30th:
Korean: 100 minutes
Japanese: 60 minutes
Swedish: 25 minutes
Mandarin: 0 minutes


Report for March:
Korean: 160 minutes
Japanese: 365 minutes
Swedish: 60 minutes
Mandarin: 105 minutes

As expected, I did a lot better this month than the previous months!

Turns out, journalling in Japanese everyday really racked up a lot of minutes. I'll be attempting this again soon. Today I have a headache so I'm not sure if I can, but I'll be doing my best. Work has also been taking up a lot of time.

Here is my BuJo for the 3 months we've had of this year in all of its glory:

bujo_JanFebMarch.JPG

It is a nice coincidence to make friends from other places who also speak the target language that you're learning. That is what else has helped these numbers, so I will keep on keeping on with language exchange where it is suitable.

I'll be drawing out the next three months of the year in a BuJo pretty soon -- I'm so behind this week because of work! I'll update again soon.

Happy studies,
-Xelian

[Xelian]

Hello everyone,

It has been a while since I made a post, and I feel a little bit bad for leaving suddenly. However, it was a much needed break. I have pretty much always put my free time into language learning ever since I decided it would be my "thing", and to be completely honest, it has been a terribly exhausting experience.

I worked on my BuJo up until about the middle or end of June. I didn't really like the way that it was turning out, though it would have looked pretty interesting if I was able to keep up with my studies. In July, I got a pretty solid three weeks of a temporary assignment for work in, so I had no time for anything other than that. I then went on vacation to see my family.

However, it has been nice to actually take it easy on the languages for the first time in a very long time. This summer I watched and enjoyed 3 entire Kamen Rider series, went to a badass Kpop concert, and made a few friends from other countries. Other than this, not much has been done with my language skills. I can't keep myself away from studying for long, but I have now realized the benefit of taking a break every once in a while.

And, I have some future language learning news. This upcoming fall, I actually took another shot in the dark and will be starting a second Bachelor's degree. It's not exactly a "prestigious school" so I'm hoping a bit of the pressure will be taken off of me. It also just feels more humbling, affordable, and a much smaller community in general, and I like that. I'm also not pursuing a language degree this time, due to my disappointment in the lack of opportunity the previous one brought me, but I am signed up for...... a Chinese class, which I fought for to replace one of my required classes. And trust me, it was NOT easy to convince my adviser, he actually did not understand why I wanted to take the class at all. But it is finally official, I get the chance to try out a language I've wanted to try in a school setting for the longest time. It seems that every time I tried to enroll in a Chinese class prior to this, it was either cancelled, or other classes were higher priority for my degree plan.

So I will be posting on here again. I'm unsure if I want to start a new thread or keep this one, but if I do start a new thread I will make a final post to this one with a link to my new language log.

Just wanted to post an update for now. More language learning coming soon!

[Xelian]

Hi everyone,

Just an update on the past 3 weeks. I am really enjoying my Chinese class! I thought instead of explaining what we've been up to I would just show you.

shishishi.jpg

writing.jpg

sentences.JPG

So this is what we've gotten through pretty much, along with some sheets similar to the "writing" image. Makes my hand hurt just looking at it, lol. But yeah, I am really happy that I get to learn Chinese, even if it's way later than I expected to learn it. I'm not certain if it will be advantageous for me to continue to take languages in school, however, as my focus is now on my new career path that I had to figure out after failing to use languages as a career.

The only setback right now is in motivation. I feel like I can't get attached to languages anymore or they will take hold of my life. I think my mindset is really getting to me. I don't know how to make language learning into something positive anymore. All that I've been shown is I put all of my effort into language learning and hardly get anything back. Sure I get to understand culture and linguistics, I understand a little bit more than someone who has never tried another language. But from all that I've seen, very few people view it how I do. To the people I have talked to, language is just a barrier that can be solved with subtitles. And it's something that very few people find important, everyone just takes subtitles and translation for granted and don't think about the effort that goes into it. And it's really hard to keep going after I've been forced to accept that my goals and ambitions are viewed as something that's not important. Anyone else know how to deal with these thoughts? If I were stronger would I have been able to pull off using Japanese in my career? It's really just a feeling of devastation. Maybe I shouldn't have expected everything to go as I had planned. Maybe I should have studied abroad. Maybe I should move to another country. All of these things just make me want to give up.

[MorkTheFiddle]

The only setback right now is in motivation. I feel like I can't get attached to languages anymore or they will take hold of my life. I think my mindset is really getting to me. I don't know how to make language learning into something positive anymore. All that I've been shown is I put all of my effort into language learning and hardly get anything back. Sure I get to understand culture and linguistics, I understand a little bit more than someone who has never tried another language. But from all that I've seen, very few people view it how I do. To the people I have talked to, language is just a barrier that can be solved with subtitles. And it's something that very few people find important, everyone just takes subtitles and translation for granted and don't think about the effort that goes into it. And it's really hard to keep going after I've been forced to accept that my goals and ambitions are viewed as something that's not important. Anyone else know how to deal with these thoughts? If I were stronger would I have been able to pull off using Japanese in my career? It's really just a feeling of devastation. Maybe I shouldn't have expected everything to go as I had planned. Maybe I should have studied abroad. Maybe I should move to another country. All of these things just make me want to give up.

There are some 10000 members of this forum, and every one of us cherishes languages and the value of learning and knowing languages. I mean, I am not much good as a motivational speaker, so I will let others here do that, but I will say that if Japanese is your dream, then pursue it. Pursuing your own dream and failing is far preferable to pursuing someone else's dream for you and failing. If I wanted to follow a career in languages, I would not take advice or even listen to someone who knows no other language and does not value language learning.
Hang in there.
That's all I've got to say.

[Xelian]

There are some 10000 members of this forum, and every one of us cherishes languages and the value of learning and knowing languages. I mean, I am not much good as a motivational speaker, so I will let others here do that, but I will say that if Japanese is your dream, then pursue it. Pursuing your own dream and failing is far preferable to pursuing someone else's dream for you and failing. If I wanted to follow a career in languages, I would not take advice or even listen to someone who knows no other language and does not value language learning.
Hang in there.
That's all I've got to say.

Thanks for the reply. It could just be my problem. My mom always asks me too, why get discouraged by other people? It isn't fully anyone in particular, I also just think subconsciously in terms of what I imagine societal expectations to be like.

Maybe I just never really wanted a career with languages. But I thought it would be enjoyable to study them. But becoming a professional was too hard for me. Becoming a professional in anything is hard. I don't know if I'll ever figure this out, lol.

Thanks again though for the reply.