language studies; japanese + spanish @ros3ybabeslanguages - Tumblr Blog

I think it’s time I reintroduce myself here.

Hello, everyone!

I go by Rose, I’m a 23 year old college student student in the southwest USA, pursuing a bachelors in Nutrition and Dietetics alongside a minor in Psychology and a minor in Exercise Science. I have a pretty busy schedule between work, school, and my personal life but I love learning in all forms, especially learning languages!

I’ve studied Japanese on and off since I was about 15 or 16 (more so off than on, if I’m being honest) and have studied Spanish on and off for a few years as well. I live in an area with a high Spanish speaking population, and have grown up around the language which has always made me have an interest in it. I’m going to work language learning back into my schedule asap and really devote some time to studying them and really learning how to understand and speak these languages clearly, at least to a conversational level.

I plan to post my goals, study tracking and progress updates, resources I use, and even use this blog as a place to practice and receive feedback!

Welcome to my language blog!

Gonna restart my language studies here soon! I’m still debating on studying Japanese, Spanish, or both, but I really enjoy Korean too. I’m thinking I want to focus on both Spanish and Japanese and then when I’m a bit more proficient in Japanese I can maybe add Korean into the mix. Here are my main current language study resources:

Busuu app (Both. I’ve been told they use AI now, but I bought the year subscription back in September so i figure I might as well use it while I have it paid for)

Genki I and II textbooks and workbooks (Japanese)

Italki (tho I’ve heard this app/website isn’t great anymore so I might switch to Preply. What do you guys recommend for speaking practice?)

Quicker/AnkiApp (Both. I prefer quizlet honestly, but I have both so we’ll see which one I use)

LinQ (Both. I think it’ll be good for reading in either language)

YouTube/Spotify (Both. Love these for listening practice, like podcasts and music)

My Boyfriend + His Family (Spanish. My boyfriend and his family speak fluent Spanish so I know I can practice with them or ask questions)

I have a Spanish textbook pdf on my iPad but I need to go look for it to remember the name. I also have a plethora of other apps and websites I will use but there’s way too many to list here right now. Maybe I’ll make a separate post for ALL the resources I use for both languages.

Excited to put it back into my routine! Any tips on staying consistent and successful with my studies?

unusual

Japanese is an incredibly fun and rewarding language (if you’ve ever wanted to learn it for ANY reason, most importantly including the “silly” reasons) but the fearmongering and capitalist intervention involved in the language learning process have given it a reputation as an “impossible task” for English speakers, leading to confusion and dkn learners and weird pessimist attitudes about the whole thing. In this thread I will explain how to effectively learn and retain Japanese. This is a tried, tested and true method; probably 99% of all people who try to learn Japanese give up, but everyone I’ve met who has tried and stuck with this has been at or above N3-N4 after 6 months or less including me

unusual

You can teach yourself Japanese for free if you have a little free time every day and a computer

1. Drill yourself on hiragana and katakana. These are the phonetic building blocks of Japanese, think of them as equivalent to english letters. This site is a good resource in general. Once you have a solid grasp on this, DO NOT LINGER HERE; move to step 2. You will master kana later.

2. Download Anki. This is a flashcard service. They have a paid app if you’re willing to invest for it, but if not, they have a mobile website (create an account and sync it with your computer).

This is the deck you’re going to download. Import it to Anki and do this every day. I have learned the hard way (twice) that skipping this is bad. If you become overwhelmed, you can change the number of new cards and reviews by clicking the cog next to the name of the deck!

3. Cure Dolly (Youtube, grammar) + transcript. She has kind of a posh accent, you might want to turn subtitles on. Watch a few videos when you feel like it but most importantly set up 4 and 5 as soon as possible

4. Yomitan (must have) is a browser extension that functions as a pop-up dictionary. you need to install dictionaries for it to work. here are some dictionaries you can use with yomitan and explanations of what they do

5. READ. DO NOT LET YOURSELF GET STUCK BEFORE THIS STEP. JUST READ!!!! Most people who fail to learn Japanese do so because they are afraid of not being ready to move on, which is counterproductive. Just read. When you were a child did you spend years on vocab and grammar before reading? No I bet you did not. Pick something to read and learn what you don’t already know by reading in Japanese.

Jiten.moe has a list of novels and visual novels that you can read on your computer sorted by difficulty. So does jpdb. There’s also this document. There’s also this document. Hey look this website is cool too

For visual novels: download LunaHook. It “hooks” to your VN and allows you to use Yomitan on words you don’t know. Turn off the translation feature, it does nothing to help you learn

For literary texts: ttsu e-reader supports epub and htmlz files.

You can also learn Japanese by watching anime, but it’s a little more convoluted and requires a lot more patience.

For manga, utilize Mangatan, but I don’t recommend this right out the gate because when you’re first learning sentence structure you’ll want something with complete sentences.

Set your computer up for mining vocab before you start reading. Once you finish your kaishi deck, you can drill your mining cards (I didn’t do mine until after finishing kaishi because it was too much).

Most importantly: reading is going to be hard at first. It is going to piss you off. You need to muscle through with this because this is where the bulk of your learning will happen. After a while you will just feel like reading because you love reading! Try not to pick something too hard for your first read, but if you’re interested in the story you might be able to muscle through something a little tougher.

Remember to consult yomitan and cure dolly where needed, that’s what it’s there for. As you can see I am quite normal about the Japanese language, so if you have any other questions or need help with anything else feel free to shoot me an ask and I will get back to you promptly. Japanese is not your enemy and it is not impossible. It is your friend

Spanish Study - Jan 7th, 2026

I was successful in starting my Spanish studies back up! I'm proud of myself for actually beginning to do my studying again, and making small yet meaningful progress.

🇲🇽 Here's what I accomplished:

10min of active studying in Busuu app

watched a 13min YouTube video from "Karla Espinosa Espanol"

listened to a 18min podcast episode from the podcast "Autoestima tu vida"

I think that's a pretty darn good start to my studying, and I'm happy that I was able to accomplish it today. Excited to see what I accomplish tomorrow!

Spanish Study Goals for Today - January 6, 2026

My goals today are very light as I am fighting off what is either a severe cold or that influenza A that is going around right now. Regardless, I feel awful, but I want to begin my studying with something. Something is always better than nothing.

🇲🇽 Spanish Study Goals - Jan 6th:

Busuu, 10min minimum 💻

Listen to one spanish podcast episode 🎵

Listen to spanish music while completing chores for the day 🎸

That is all I think I'll be able to manage today, but I'll do an updated post tonight to see what I accomplished and write out my goals for tomorrow.

til later, lovelies 🩷

Hello lovelies!

I really want to restart my language learning journey, particularly with Spanish above all else. (my boyfriend is bilingual english/Spanish and his family speaks majority in Spanish, so I feel like it's an appropriate time to learn.)

I'm not sure where to begin or how to work it more into my schedule again. I have lots of free time the next two weeks, but then school and work will start back up and I just really want to keep myself consistent and disciplined with it.

Any advice or recommendations, on how to start or where to even begin with incorporating it back into my routine? I want it to be a daily thing practice for me. What do yall recommend?

Also, for fun, what's the best aspect to primarily focus on when restarting your language learning journey?

What should I start with/focus on?

reading (books, articles, etc)

writing (workbooks, diary entries, etc)

listening (music, podcasts, TV, etc)

speaking (italki, in person, etc)

reading AND writing together

listening AND speaking together

a combination of all 4 (using multiple sources)

Voting ended onJan 11

any app, book, movie, TV, music, podcasts, YouTube channel, workbook recommendations would also be helpful!!!

ros3ybabe

Should I start my own version of 75 hard/medium/soft? I really want to get my life together as best as I can. I want to keep myself productive and accountable too.

Anyone have any recommendations or advice or tips on staying motivated, disciplined, and consistent with my efforts to complete a 74 day challenge?

Should I post daily here to keep myself accountable, and also upload whatever rules I decide for myself to keep me accountable?

75 Day Challenge? Yes, No, Idk?

Yes, it'll be so beneficial

No, it's too difficult

Voting ended onSep 27, 2025

Please leave me your best books, podcasts, apps, tips, advice, whatever you think could be helpful. I want to prove to myself that I am capable of doing something good like this for my life. But idk if I should.

thank you <3

ros3ybabe

Here's the link to my college fund gofundme. No pressure, nothing like that. I appreciate this community. If you guys can reblog this post, I'd really appreciate it. I wouldn't make a gofundme if I wasn't stressed and a little desperate to be able to stay in college. My degrees and education mean the world to me. I love you all.

https://gofund.me/772b73e9

here's my post describing why I made a gofundme:

so....my interview for the 2nd job got canceled AND I have found that I may be unable to pay for college for my spring semester due to the n

🩷

Current Study Split 🎀

I am currently studying Spanish and Korean, and while I want to spend more time on Spanish because I'm at the point of beginning to speak Spanish and am still an absolute beginner in Korean, my brain keeps trying to make me focus more on Korean because I'm having so much fun with it. So here is the way my week is broken up, with a little bit of insight into how I like to study for the languages.

Sunday - Spanish

Monday - Spanish

Tuesday - Spanish

Wednesday - Korean

Thursday - Korean

Friday - Korean

Saturday - Whichever I Want

My main ways of studying Spanish are:

Busuu

Listening to music

Actively listening to and studying podcasts

Actively watching and studying from movies/TV shows

Practicing flashcards + vocabulary

Italki lessons whenever I get the money

My main ways of studying Korean are:

Busuu

Learn Korean with Billy Go on YouTube

Passively listening to music

Passively watching kdramas

Practicing vocabulary

Practicing Hangul via writing + flashcards

Italki lessons when I have the money

*I want to start using Talk to Me in Korean, but I don't have the money for a subscription just yet. My italki teacher advised me to focus on Hangul and light vocab for now, given my (lack of) current skill in the language.

*My Spanish italki teacher gave me some good advice for studying using podcasts that I can't wait to try out. She said it'll be useful for our next lesson so I can come prepared with something to speak about. Not to sure how I feel about continuing lessons with her but I'll give it a couple more tries and see how it goes. I do like her, but I don't know if it'll be the out helpful with the way she runs our lessons.

I will start posting monthly goals for my languages starting in August! I think it'll help me guide my studies a bit and help me check my progress.

til next time lovelies 🩷

mochayoubi

one of my students shared this cool website where you can drill yourself on japanese conjugations: link

i looked at it myself and you can mess with options to choose if you want verbs, adjectives, which conjugations you want to practice, if you want furigana, etc. there's a bunch of stuff

ihayachii-deactivated20250126

One of my favorite and highly recommended 🇯🇵✨

Language Learning Update 🎀

So, this langblr started out for just Spanish but I've decided that I want to pursue learning three languages (out of the many I'd love to know) at the same time. I'm near A2 level in Spanish, my Japanese knowledge needs some work, and I've decided to add on Korean as well.

As many of you know, I'm currently out of town for work, and I didn't bring and Japanese study materials that I like to use. However, I discovered the Talk to Me in Korean website and found pdfs of their Level 1 and 2 textbooks, so I want to spend the next 6 weeks on Korean and Spanish, and see how I feel once I'm back home and university is going again.

I know learning languages both takes time and is a life long process. As long as I can stay consistent even with a bare minimum a day, I know I will be successful in the long run. It's impossible to acquire a language overnight, so I'm determined to make time for these languages and understanding of the commitment this will take.

Even when I've drifted from my languages learning, I ALWAYS come back to it. I love learning and I love communication. So this is something I'm ready to buckle down in, as many times as it takes.

If anyone has any good resources for learning Korean, Japanese, and Spanish, feel free to comment or message me them! Always looking for entertainment and study resources to accent my learning journey <3

til next time lovelies 🩷

what are your guys thoughts on learning multiple languages at one time? I am nearing A2 level in Spanish, and want to add back on Japanese and eventually Korean, Italian, Madarin, etc. Right now however, I want to add on Japanese, I’m at least thinking about it. What are your thoughts on two languages at a time?

** I did self study Japanese for around two/three years before switching to only focusing on Spanish. So I’d be relearning the basics and moving on from there. I own the Genki I and Genki II textbooks and workbooks currently.

What should I do?

get to A2/B1 in Spanish first and then add Japanese

add Japanese back now, there’s no problem, the languages are so different

Voting ended onMay 26, 2024

Language Resources 🎀

*that I currently use for studying Spanish. When I pick up studying Japanese again, I will make a list for that as well <3 I currently use a handful of resources for learning Spanish, and they've all proven very useful so far!

🩷 My Current Resources for Spanish

Busuu - hands down my favorite language learning app. So much better than Duolingo, in my opinion (especially for languages with a different alphabet/writing system). I bought the premium for a year, which will expire in Septmeber, but I'm debating renewing again because I love it so much.

LingQ - I like using this for reading in Spanish. It gives me different types of things to read about, and while I don't have premium, I do put all the words I don't know into flashcards on AnkiApp on my laptop and translate anything I don't know using SpanishDict.

SpanishDict - favorite translation/dictionary app. I know it has lessons you can use, tho I haven't tried it yet, but I really do love this app. It's super helpful when I'm making flashcards or writing random vocabulary notes.

Goodnotes - This is a general note-taking app, but I love it because it allows you to import and write on PDFs, and that's just perfect for me! I've downloaded free PDF short stories/children's stories in Spanish and made notes of words I don't know, and taken notes in the app too. Definitely my favorite notes app, ever.

Italki - I know this is a website, too, but I use the app. It lets you work with professional teachers/community tutors in your target language. You can have structured lessons or just use it for conversation practice. I did a trial lesson not too long ago and have an upcoming lesson booked out in about 5 days. You pay per lesson, so there is no subscription, and there are so many languages and teachers/tutors to choose from. I did a lot of research before choosing a teacher, and I'm very happy with my decision so far. Definitely useful if there's not native speakers near you or you're like me and not confident talking to people you know in your target language/their native language.

Quizlet/AnkiApp - I use AnkiApp more then quizlet, and the Anki I'm referring to is NOT the same way everyone else uses, but it's the flashcard app of preference at the moment. I tried the AnkiDroid app and hated it. But yeah, AnkiApp is useful for flashcards and I really like it. I have it on my Chromebook and my Ipad.

Netflix - I love watching shows in Spanish on Netflix so much. I am currently watching La Reina del Sur on it (used to watch that sporadically in the past at a friend's house) and plan on watching some other shows, including Elite.

Spotify - I enjoy listening to Spanish music and podcasts right now. The music is more of an entertaining/enjoyable fork of audio input, and the podcasts help me get a feel for speaking and pronunciation and I choose podcasts that speak on topics of interest tk help with vocabulary in those areas I'd like to be able to speak about.

Textbooks - I have 2 PDF textbooks, Gramatica de Uso del Español: A1-B2 and Gramatica de Uso del Español: B1-B2. I've heard these are great for learning Spanish (and they're both only written in Spanish, like there's no English in them) and plan on using them once I figure out how to take good and useful textbook notes! I definitely need to improve on my grammar.

Those are all my current Spanish resources! I'd definitely say my current level is like a high A1 right now, nearing A2, but I have just a little bit of work to do before I get there. These resources are definitely gonna help, tho!

does anyone have any tips, recommendations, or like resources for taking language notes from a textbook? I have two Spanish textbooks (pdfs) that I want to start writing notes from to help me with grammar, but I have no idea where to start with taking textbook notes!

if you have tips, or know of a good blog, youtuber, or something that'll help me figure out how to start with textbook notes, I'd really appreciate it <3

intro to my langblr side blog!

you can call me rose!

21 years old

current college student in the USA

loves learning languages, pink aesthetic, pilates and fitness, and food!

English first language!

currently studying Mexican/Latin American Spanish

eventually want to study and learn: Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, Italian, Portuguese, American Sign Language, and maybe French

have self studied Japanese as well on and off for almost four years but focusing on Spanish as of now

I will post my language tips, goals, my routines, resources, and things in Spanish to get some practice. <3

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language studies; japanese + spanish