alaart's log (JP/CN/KR, Chinese focus for the next 2 months)

[alaart]

Super busy with moving, did my daily Anki while I had to do errands. I was super tired in the evening, so the only thing I had motivation for was learning another Japanese Song. I picked 丸の内サディスティック. Also read through the wikipedia article on the song. Added around ~30 cards from all of this to Anki.

Fun little side story: When I counter checked my version to the (pretty insufficient) fan-translation, I was super confused that "monk" was translated with "bonze". This indeed seems to be the correct term, which I never heard in English, but in my native German this is a light insult, meaning that someone is a "show off" (with money). And indeed, the German insult actually derives from the Japanese word for monk, wait what : Explanation in German.

[alaart]

I'm in Taiwan since yesterday. Last month was pretty stressful, and especially last week there was no time for any study. Had to finish organizing and I didn't really prepare for Taiwan at all.

Not sure what to think of all that over-praise on immersion. In the end it might just have been easier and cheaper to study at home - instead of this 1 week trip to Taiwan. My conversations are mostly limited to store clerks, vendors, and asking people for directions or explanations. I'm having quite some trouble with speaking honestly, and also getting the answers from the questions I ask. Speaking with strangers, not really working right now. I spoke with an old guy at a park, and he was curious at first - but didn't like that I asked him personal questions. I mostly met with friends, and will continue to do so throughout the week, didn't speak Chinese with my friends.

Beeing here is very good for reading though, the Hanzi are everywhere, and since I learned most of them before, even though I have forgotten, it is really good to see them in context and get the meaning - I forced myself to do more reading here and there. Food menus, street signs, explanations, product descriptions. Tried reading a Japanese fashion magazine on the airplane. I also went to a language exchange meeting and spoke at the Japanese table.

Also there is a Taifun here, and its raining heavily. I think I'm getting sick, should have taken it a bit more easy.

[alaart]

My Taiwan week turned out to be a great learning experience after all. I got used to it, and I started to speak lots and lots of Chinese, I could even follow some conversations of native speakers.
I spent a lot of time reading general public information. Food menus, instructions, advertisement. When I find the time I need to add those to my Anki decks, for now they are in the Pleco dictionary history. I spent a lot of time with my friends in Taiwan (German and Taiwanese), and I did some sightseeing.

I bought 3 Chinese books, one friend of mine teaches Chinese and she brought me to a bookstore especially for ABC (American born Chinese), so I'm reading the first book from there called 心結 - A Nurse's Story. Just read the first chapter, the book is boring, created study material at the expense of a good story, it is a bit above my level, and I have to look up quite a lot of characters and words, hope I get through it fast.

I bought another book called '日語句型' (Japanese Sentence patterns) which contains a list of 1000 common patterns and a lot of sentence patterns. That is for later.

I just arrived in Japan. My Japanese has some mistakes it shouldn't have, and I had to go through the lightening fast explanation of my landlord of how everything works. Will have to get used to everyday life here, hope I can do that fast.

[MorkTheFiddle]

An exciting and maybe stressful time for you. It looks to me as if you are going to have a blast over there.

[brilliantyears]

I bought 3 Chinese books, one friend of mine teaches Chinese and she brought me to a bookstore especially for ABC (American born Chinese), so I'm reading the first book from there called 心結 - A Nurse's Story. Just read the first chapter, the book is boring, created study material at the expense of a good story, it is a bit above my level, and I have to look up quite a lot of characters and words, hope I get through it fast.

Do you mind sharing the name+location of this bookstore? I'll be in Taiwan in October and would love to check it out

[alaart]

Do you mind sharing the name+location of this bookstore? I'll be in Taiwan in October and would love to check it out

Cool! Have fun there - it will definitely be better once it is a little cooler. Can also recommend the language Café here, they have one in most major cities.

Address of the book store is:
師大書苑
106台北市大安區和平東路一段182-3號
02 8369 5558

It's this one in Taibei.

[brilliantyears]

Thank you!

[alaart]

Anki / review:
I had to catch up to my neglected Anki-decks since I started traveling here, I did study a little in Taiwan - but not the full amount for 10 days and I had to review like 2500 cards or something the last two days. Hated that.

Also the input the last 2 weeks hasn't been thoroughly, so there are vocabularies where I didn't study the Kanji together with the words, or conjunctions where I forgot how to use them in sentences etc.

- will not fix that now, rather delete random cards without context and learn them somewhere else in context again. Also deleted some restaurant menus and other notes I made in Taiwan but won't be able to study. I prefer to study, when the input is fresh and memorable and I can feel a connection to the place and time, I feel I have already forgotten where and when I did use those words. Will also only quickly go through said dictionary history for adding new Chinese words, then deleting it too. Just so much more new input coming in now.

Teaching:
Then I gave my first German lesson as a teacher yesterday. I teach a group once a week from now on. They consists of semi-retired and retired people ranging from 55 to 80. The 80 year old made a straight Hitler joke . Their German is around B1, and they have been learning like this for 25 years. I confused them a bit, when I tried to explain German conjunctive/subjunctive tense in Japanese - but otherwise the lesson was fine. Depending if I want it or not, I might get a second teaching job soon.

Shared house:
I arrived a week earlier than recommended, so I'm living alone now, but in a couple of days I will be living with 2x French, 2x Mexican and 2x Cantonese people together. I know that would be a polyglot dream for many of you, but I don't speak any of those language. Actually I'm a bit afraid the Mexicans will mess up my Portuguese. Maybe I can speak some Mandarin with the Cantonese people, but still not sure if they like it (the 3 Cantonese people I met in Germany so far all refused to speak Mandarin with me and all answered in either English or Japanese ^^)

[alaart]

Joined a Chinese-Japanese language exchange group today, it's perfect for me - as I can improve in both languages. The conversation level was high, as they talked about cultural differences between Taiwan / Japan, a lot about old Kanji and about Japanese 鵜飼い (Cormorant fishing). I must admit, I was completely lost.

Everyone was friendly and helped me, will join them again. And also might join a different Chinese-Japanese group on Friday. Will probably focus on going out a lot the first couple weeks, to make some friends here.

[alaart]

Finally studied all the words in my dictionary log from Taiwan and added them to Anki, I still remembered them . Also added my dictionary log from Japan so far, it is mostly food and advertisement, street sign - vocabulary.

Joined another language exchange group on Monday, English-Japanese this time. Just trying to make some friends.

And I got my first room mate today, one of the Cantonese guys. He likes Anime, so I watched two episodes of 鬼滅の刃 (Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba) with him, I understood most of the first episode, but couldn't follow some of the logic in the second one. I usually don't watch Anime, but this is well done. Might continue watching it.

Oh and we first spoke Mandarin for the first half hour or so, but it really is tedious to speak, and I have to ask to repeat a lot, and so eventually because the explaining of what I wanted to say was done in Japanese, it become 100% Japanese quickly