JapaneseLingq detects I know 3320 words.
I finished Chapter 1 and 2 of
三姉妹探偵団... Chapter 1 was more or less raising the stakes, and chapter two was kind of developing the other two sisters rather than just the middle sister Yuriko. Sometimes this book makes very fast transitions and I momentarily get lost (a conversation is happening between A and B, no one else is there. Suddenly C reacts and we are now in a conversation of B relating the conversation with A to C and D). However, otherwise I think this book is a pretty good level for me.
Something kind of interesting is that I've inadvertently proven the more controversial parts of the Heisig theory to myself by doing all this reading... here are two situations:
肯く - I knew this kanji only by Heisig keyword... I quickly came to attach it's meaning in context (nodding to agree) and it's reading うなずく with this kanji.
訊く- I knew this word, but have never studied this kanji. Despite seeing it over and over again, without it in front of me I can't even picture this kanji in my mind. I only recognize it in the exact context of dialog tags, probably nowhere else.
I would like to study kanji again, but right now, I just don't have the time to continue with my etymology project. Within that project, I think I have already learned everything which may be used as a semantic component or is a pictogram. After all, such kanji are generally fairly easy to write, and no kanji I have left to study has fewer than 8 strokes.
I tried out Wanikani, but I just can't justify the price or the amount of time right now... I would need to get to level 20 before I start seeing kanji I don't know, god knows when I would be regularly learning new kanji. Realistically knowing myself and that I will miss some SRS sessions, I imagine it would take me about 3 years to go thru the program. This means a lifetime membership is most cost effective.
I also tried an anki deck from the Kodansha Kanji Learners Course... but I'm immediately aware that these cards have too much information on them. What I need is a keyword on the front, and the stroke order on the back + a reminder of my mnemonic (previously I used the actual etymology of the glyph as a mnemonic)... I have already proven that having a mental dictionary entry linking the keyword and the kanji is enough for me to start linking actual meanings and readings to the kanji (肯く proves it).
Wanikani does this kind of stuff better than most shared anki decks in my experience... Because each "card" tests 1 thing only, and it is pass fail... so the Wanikani user is never in the frustrating position of marking a card wrong because the card tested 5 things (kanji form, onyomi, kunyomi -- both transitive and intransitive, and example vocabulary) and they only got 4 out of 5 right. The KKLC deck I found is exactly the opposite, even testing multiple onyomi on a single card.
So, I've put together a plan that kind of looks like this:
-Test self on Heisig Kanji Keywords
-Remove Kanji that were written correctly... if I got it right after this amount of time, this is a kanji that I've internalized to the point where I do not need to study it
-Generate Flash Cards with only the keyword on the front and the stroke order on the back.
-Depending on the number of cards generated, study some extremely low number of new kanji each day... I am thinking around 5 new kanji a day.
-Study the cards creating mnemonics out of the glyph etymology which I have already learned (this should prevent me from having to re-memorize radicals as having a different keyword than what I already know)
-See where I am next time Wanikani does a huge sale
-If I'm doing well stick with this, if I'm struggling buy Wanikani... maybe spending a fortune on this is the motivation I actually need to complete this project.
I have so far this week tested myself on 40% if the the joyo kanji. From that 40%, I have generated 276 flashcards. My expectation is that very shortly now, I will only know the first couple of kanji in a set... (in other words, Heisig will teach 耳, I will know a few like 取 and 最, but there will be a bunch more that I don't know. My expectation is that I will need to study about 60% of the joyo kanji -- either due to only really knowing the kyoiku kanji inside out, or making small errors while writing which I would like to tighten up--but the week it will take me to isolate those which I actually need to study from those which I truly already know will save me a huge amount of time in the long run if I'm gonna study 5 new cards a day.
Of course none of this helps for 訊 specifically as it is not a joyo kanji, but I think it will improve my retention of new vocabulary attained thru reading overall.
I'm also considering making my etymology deck public... it teaches all of the Kyoiku kanji by glyph origin, as well as any joyo or jimeijo kanji which are used as components within the Kyoiku kanji. For me, this allowed me to jump into authentic works for children and teens and learning the real etymology kept things interesting for me. Maybe there are 1 or 2 other people on earth who would be interested in studying this way
EsperantoLing detects I know 3170 words.
I finished another chapter of
Ĉu vi kuiras ĉine? Another suspect was introduced, but I have a feeling this one is a red herring because he's just a little too likely.
Spent more time helping komencantojn in chatrooms. Chatroom time was limited this week due to preparations for trying to give my husband a decent quarantine birthday.
SpanishLingq detects I know 619 words.
I spent a bunch of time this week searching for an authentic Spanish book which would be easy enough for me to read it. Based on
this list I selected
Esperanza renace. Unfortunately, this is actually translated from English. I'm hoping that this translated work may prep me for Allende's
La ciudad de las bestias, which in turn may prepare me for
La casa de los espíritus and then more modern Spanish literature for adults.
Gosh the plan for Spanish is so much more straightforward than the plan for Japanese
Either that means it's an unrealistic plan, or Spanish will really be that much easier than Japanese.