My journey into Japanese and Russian
Posted: Thu Aug 02, 2018 5:41 pm
Hi there!
I've been off-line as of lately... You may or may not have seen my French log which I've neglected because I was preparing for my DELF B2, I can now announce that I have successfully passed it, so I guess I can now add French to the list of languages I fluently speak. I still want to reach C1 eventually so I'll keep going with Jensen's Le Français par la «méthode nature», I worked my way up until chapter 24 (that means I pretty much memorised the vocabulary and grammar and can now actively use them), but I still have a long way to go to reach the final chapter (50). I guess it's nice to know that reaching chapter 24 of Jensen's method is an equivalent to a B2, that information should be helpful for other people going solo with that method.
Of course I didn't just study Jensen, but I literally drowned myself in French debate and news podcasts (I'm interested in politcs and literature anyway, so I really enjoyed the time invested in acquiring audio input), everyday I heard C dans l'air, the debate sections of FRANCE 24 and the International News section of Europe 1, also I began following the channels of Sur le champ, Nota Bene, Questions d'Histoire, Linguisticae and the podcast of Blog Histoire.
The two or three times I had some sort of grammar-related doubt that was not solved by Jensen himself I consulted Français avec Pierre, Français Authentique or Grammaire Française and everything got solved.
I also got myself the audiobooks of Maurice Druon's Les rois maudits and Yourcenar's Mémoires d'Hadrien and heard them over and over and over until I finally understood what it was all about. Then I watched the Netflix series Call my agent! and Marseille, I had no problem whatsoever understanding them. I can now understand perfectly any spoken French even if 5% to 10% of the vocabulary remains obscure to me, but I've thankfully learned not to stress over it and either infer from context or learn the phrases as they are in the hope of one day knowing all the specifics.
The same can be said about my reading abilities, I've begun reading Glotz & Cohen's Histoire Grecque II. La Grèce au Ve siècle, I have some difficulties because of the time tenses I've not yet mastered, mainly Passé antérieur, Passé simple, Futur Anteriéur, Subjonctif imparfait, Subjonctif perfect, Conditional passé 1 and Conditional passé 2, but that will solve itself as I advance with Jensen. Since I've pretty much reached the level I wanted (and needed) to read things such as that book of Greek history or a novel I will be dedicating considerable less time to French, much to my pain since I wish my written skills could have gotten better than they are.
Now, since I finally got French of my chest I can finally begin to study Japanese (my childhood dream) and Russian. Over the next weeks I'll begin learning the alphabets. I'll focus mainly on Japanese and stop myself from getting beyond the alphabet and a few simple phrases in Russian for three reasons: 1) Thanks to my misspent childhood watching anime I already have a very good idea of Japanese and could probably understand about 6% to 8% of a conversation even if I can't read a word. 2) Russian does not have such a great appeal to me right now, and 3) I'm still naively hoping to find Oleg Objedof-Koefoed's Русский язык по методу Натура so that I can teach myself with a method I've used (with enormous success) before and that adjusts to my learning style.
So for Russian I'll limit myself to learning the alphabet with the videos of Learn Russian - Russian Alphabet Made Easy and occasionally watching some videos of Le Russe avec une Russe and Apprendre le russe avec Ania.
With Japanese I'll first slowly teach myself Hiragana and Katakana with the videos of Learn Japanese with JapanesePod101.com and I'll begin to follow Cours de japonais!
I'm in no hurry so I can do those things with all the care in the world. Since the closest thing of a "Japanese by the nature method" is Assimil's Le japonais sans peine, I went ahead and ordered the three volumes, yes in French, so as to force myself to keep at it. And I guess I'll begin with that as soon as I learn Hiragana and Katakana.
I'd be thrilled if you could recommend me apps to practice written Japanese (or the alphabets at least), not Anki-style mind you, but something that actually allows you to write the characters and corrects you, even in the order of strokes. Any other tips would be very appreciated.
I heard there's a number of "Teach yourself Japanese with manga" courses and material. Does any of you have any experience with them? Which one (if any) would you recommend? In your experience, is there any sense in combining them with the Assimil? I ask because despite my occasional claims to the contrary, if I do successfully teach myself Japanese I'd probably just use it to read raw manga and watch raw anime instead of reading Genji Monogatari or something like that.
Which Japanese-English dictionary app would you recommend? This guy seems to offer excellent advice but I'd like second opinions.
Also I'd be interested in any resources in French for learning Japanese and Russian.
I've been off-line as of lately... You may or may not have seen my French log which I've neglected because I was preparing for my DELF B2, I can now announce that I have successfully passed it, so I guess I can now add French to the list of languages I fluently speak. I still want to reach C1 eventually so I'll keep going with Jensen's Le Français par la «méthode nature», I worked my way up until chapter 24 (that means I pretty much memorised the vocabulary and grammar and can now actively use them), but I still have a long way to go to reach the final chapter (50). I guess it's nice to know that reaching chapter 24 of Jensen's method is an equivalent to a B2, that information should be helpful for other people going solo with that method.
Of course I didn't just study Jensen, but I literally drowned myself in French debate and news podcasts (I'm interested in politcs and literature anyway, so I really enjoyed the time invested in acquiring audio input), everyday I heard C dans l'air, the debate sections of FRANCE 24 and the International News section of Europe 1, also I began following the channels of Sur le champ, Nota Bene, Questions d'Histoire, Linguisticae and the podcast of Blog Histoire.
The two or three times I had some sort of grammar-related doubt that was not solved by Jensen himself I consulted Français avec Pierre, Français Authentique or Grammaire Française and everything got solved.
I also got myself the audiobooks of Maurice Druon's Les rois maudits and Yourcenar's Mémoires d'Hadrien and heard them over and over and over until I finally understood what it was all about. Then I watched the Netflix series Call my agent! and Marseille, I had no problem whatsoever understanding them. I can now understand perfectly any spoken French even if 5% to 10% of the vocabulary remains obscure to me, but I've thankfully learned not to stress over it and either infer from context or learn the phrases as they are in the hope of one day knowing all the specifics.
The same can be said about my reading abilities, I've begun reading Glotz & Cohen's Histoire Grecque II. La Grèce au Ve siècle, I have some difficulties because of the time tenses I've not yet mastered, mainly Passé antérieur, Passé simple, Futur Anteriéur, Subjonctif imparfait, Subjonctif perfect, Conditional passé 1 and Conditional passé 2, but that will solve itself as I advance with Jensen. Since I've pretty much reached the level I wanted (and needed) to read things such as that book of Greek history or a novel I will be dedicating considerable less time to French, much to my pain since I wish my written skills could have gotten better than they are.
Now, since I finally got French of my chest I can finally begin to study Japanese (my childhood dream) and Russian. Over the next weeks I'll begin learning the alphabets. I'll focus mainly on Japanese and stop myself from getting beyond the alphabet and a few simple phrases in Russian for three reasons: 1) Thanks to my misspent childhood watching anime I already have a very good idea of Japanese and could probably understand about 6% to 8% of a conversation even if I can't read a word. 2) Russian does not have such a great appeal to me right now, and 3) I'm still naively hoping to find Oleg Objedof-Koefoed's Русский язык по методу Натура so that I can teach myself with a method I've used (with enormous success) before and that adjusts to my learning style.
So for Russian I'll limit myself to learning the alphabet with the videos of Learn Russian - Russian Alphabet Made Easy and occasionally watching some videos of Le Russe avec une Russe and Apprendre le russe avec Ania.
With Japanese I'll first slowly teach myself Hiragana and Katakana with the videos of Learn Japanese with JapanesePod101.com and I'll begin to follow Cours de japonais!
I'm in no hurry so I can do those things with all the care in the world. Since the closest thing of a "Japanese by the nature method" is Assimil's Le japonais sans peine, I went ahead and ordered the three volumes, yes in French, so as to force myself to keep at it. And I guess I'll begin with that as soon as I learn Hiragana and Katakana.
I'd be thrilled if you could recommend me apps to practice written Japanese (or the alphabets at least), not Anki-style mind you, but something that actually allows you to write the characters and corrects you, even in the order of strokes. Any other tips would be very appreciated.
I heard there's a number of "Teach yourself Japanese with manga" courses and material. Does any of you have any experience with them? Which one (if any) would you recommend? In your experience, is there any sense in combining them with the Assimil? I ask because despite my occasional claims to the contrary, if I do successfully teach myself Japanese I'd probably just use it to read raw manga and watch raw anime instead of reading Genji Monogatari or something like that.
Which Japanese-English dictionary app would you recommend? This guy seems to offer excellent advice but I'd like second opinions.
Also I'd be interested in any resources in French for learning Japanese and Russian.