The Languages Corner

A sideblog to keep track of my language learning progress. Current language: Japanese. If you see any replies from alittlesliceofeverything, that is my main.

[eternallearnslanguages]

I decided not to rewrite out the hiragana characters again, because I'm fairly confident with them.

A couple of hours have helped me drastically with my katakana, although there are still three characters that I need to memorise. So I'll retest myself tomorrow too, and hopefully, I will have made it!

After photo:

I hate how my writing naturally ends up slanting off to the right, haha.

[eternallearnslanguages]

Confession time! I had learnt all the hiragana characters when I was in college (my interest in actually learning the Japanese language came after I had started, so I hadn't picked Japanese language as a subject) a few years ago, so I didn't find it too difficult picking them back up. I hadn't put any effort into learning katakana, and so am finding it much more of a struggle than hiragana.

So I've decided, as a way to keep my motivation up for memorising and writing the katakana as well as the hiragana characters, to take before and after photos as a sort of test for myself.

So I'll begin my afternoon of study with what I can write from memory at that time, and then take an after photo of what I can write from memory around four hours later. Hopefully, it won't take too long to learn the katakana. I know it can be done within a day if you really need to, but I don't know if I'll be able to with being tired from work and studying around my evening tasks for the day, haha.

So without further ado, my starting point is this:

[eternallearnslanguages]

Some writing practise today (I know my handwriting is terrible)! There are a couple of Hiragana characters (めねぬわをせみ) that I struggle to write from memory, so I need some extra practise for them today!

For the kanji, let's see what I remember:

私 - I (usually female), pronounced わたし

血 - Blood (I need to remember to twist the stalk so it's round the right way next time!), pronounced ち alone or けつ as part of a word from what I have noticed so far.

人 - Person, pronounced ひと

枢 - Pivot, hinge, pronounced くるる

俺 - I, (I think this is used more by males, but I'm not sure) pronounced おれ

零 - Zero (this character doesn't look quite right to me here, but putting it into google translate does make the character look more like the one I've learnt to write, so I suppose this is the one I'm looking for), pronounced れい

父 - Father, pronounced ちち alone or とう as part of お父さん

間 - Time/ space between, pronounced あいだ

And a bonus 人間 which means human and is pronounced にんげん.

I'm thinking the next set of Kanji characters to learn will be some animals. I do like me a cute animal.

[eternallearnslanguages]

My Vampire Knight volumes arrived today! I've been trying to read from the beginning, but flipping through does lead me to small sentences that I can read and understand at my current level. It makes me feel good about my progress!

I've decided to purchase a copy of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone in Japanese for my study novel of choice. Now I just need to wait for it to arrive. And then let the headaches begin!

[eternallearnslanguages]

I fell off the study wagon for a while there, but hopefully I am back now!

I have downloaded a few apps to help with writing hiragana, katakana and kanji. I've also purchased three copies of Vampire Knight volumes in Japanese to practise my reading, which should be here in two days! The goal is to own them all and to be able to read them without scrutinising the English volumes for help with translations. And in future to purchase more series in the original Japanese so that I don't have to wait for translations to come out!

I've also made a little more progress with my Duolingo lessons, and I would love to be able to do the Memrise/ Lingodeer alongside it, but I haven't been in the position to listen to them (it doesn't help that there are no visual clues for those as there is Duolingo, plus that handy dandy "can't listen now" feature).

I'm going to attempt writing some characters on paper after work later today, so we'll see how this goes!

[eternallearnslanguages]

Update for 19/05/2019

I am currently working through the food 1 lesson on Duolingo (I will have to start practising writing the Kanji characters within because they are a lot harder for me to memorise than the lovely simple Hiragana characters!), but for the past few days, I have been attempting to read a couple of manga volumes that I own in Japanese!

I must say, major shoutout to Vampire Knight Memories for having the tiny Hiragana characters next to the kanji which makes things so much easier for me! I may just start with the boku, ore and watashi kanji symbols and work my way outwards from there, as I have started to recognise them when attempting to decipher the words!

[eternallearnslanguages]

いぬ - Dog

ねこ - Cat

とり - Bird

うさぎ - Rabbit

なつ - Summer

ふゆ - Winter

よる - Night

ひる - Daytime

はれ - Sunny

くもり - Cloudy

いえ - House

へや - Room

そと - Outside

せなか - Back

め - Eye

みみ - Ear

はじめまして - Nice to meet you

___といいます - My name is ___

[eternallearnslanguages]

Not too much progress again today. I got to the end of intro 1 on Duolingo. I am so ready to learn some new phrases!

I have happily discovered that I can recognise 何 when I see it written, though I can't quite write it from memory. My journey into kanji has begun!

I've also ordered some Japanese language books from my local library to help myself along. I hope there are more kanji symbols to learn in there. I want to be able to read in full Japanese one day. <3

[eternallearnslanguages]

Almost finished the intro 1 section of duolingo (level 4 18/25)! I can't wait to write something other than "I am American/Japanese/Chinese," "Pleased to meet you, I am Tanaka/John/Maria," and "Pleased to meet you, my name is Tanaka/John/ Maria."

I didn't get around to practising any writing today, unfortunately.

[eternallearnslanguages]

The introduction

Hello and welcome to my blog!

The primary goal of this blog is to keep track of my language learning progress, including writing practice and new words. I hope to eventually be competent enough to even craft full sentences!

The secondary goal of the blog is to have a physical record of my progress so that I can see how far I have come in a week, month, or year. I look forward to this aspect! I think it will be very beneficial to me.

So that you know where I am at this, the start of the blog, I've been using duolingo as my primary source for the past week to learn Japanese. I can say that my hiragana has improved by a truckload. I have even been able to read a couple of sentences, even if I haven't been able to decipher the English meaning just yet. I have also downloaded Memrise and Lingodeer for supplimentary learning, though they have not yet been used as extensively as duolingo.

I hope you enjoy the journey with me, and maybe you will learn something too!