Discover Top Posts Tagged with #japanese progress

8/24/2025 Updates:

My brain not feeling underwater anymore is fucking awesome. I feel so good. I can't believe how much easier it is to understand every fucking language I've studied before. I can't believe how underwater I felt before.

Tested my French: Inner French episode I left off of last time (episode 7 on conspiray theories) was at least as comprehensible now this time. Although I felt it now takes less mental effort to pay attention and follow what's going on.

Tested my Spanish (obviously as it's most of what I've enjoyed this past week): absolutely notice it's easier now than before. I can now repeat after almost every word, figure out or already know and recall the meaning of almost every word, of Spanish Boost Gaming and Spanish Boost podcast videos. Yesterday I tried to watch a How to Spanish podcast video, because I know I could not understand that series when I started studying Spanish, and lo and behold I CAN understand at least 1 episode of How to Spanish now! The speed was a little faster than Martin from Spanish Boost, and there were definitely more unknown words. But the words still felt quite easy to parse, to figure out the unknown words from context, to quickly recognize and understand the words I know. And since I studied Spanish directly before the hospital, watched a little Spanish Boost Gaming in the hospital (because it was familiar and emotionally comforting), directly after the hospital, and now every day since getting out of the hospital, it is extremely clear to me how much my memory and recall/recognition speed are getting daily. How much my ability to figure out new words from context improves daily. It truly felt like I was underwater holding my breath feeling exhausted, trying to hear and understand stuff before. And now I am above water in the air where everything is clear sounding and I can breathe easy and am wide awake and alert.

Tested my Chinese: a few days ago with Guardian cdrama and Dashu Mandarin, recall and recognition speed was slower then. Tested my Chinese again yesterday, was better than it had ever been before. Dashu Mandarin was finally clear and easy feeling and understandable. I realized Xiaogua Chinese Upper Intermediate felt easy to me yesterday, I barely heard any new words except policy 政策 and 农村, which I could easily and quickly guess the meanings from context.

Testing my Japanese now: listening to Nihongo Con Teppei beginning episodes I have heard before multiple times, as I know for sure I understood these before the hospital. Like everything else language related, it is so much EASIER to follow what is being said - I don't need to put in as much effort, I can type or multitask while listening and still follow what's being said, I could translate these sentences if required (which is a skill I was finding too hard pre-surgery pre-hospital visit). With how much easier Japanese feels, I am wondering if I'll still feel like an upper beginner, or if I will feel like intermediate stuff is doable more now. Like I find this Yakuza Lets Play easier to follow now (although I could follow the main idea gist months ago - it just felt like way more effort to focus, to figure out word meaning from context clues, the speed of understanding felt so delayed compared to now).

I wonder how much of all this stuff I've studied, my brain was actually storing into memory, and it's just the bleeding made my memory and focus absolute shit so it felt really hard to grasp more than the overall main idea and felt like I was on a delay. Like those old school dial up internet speed, versus now on high speed internet (as in how my recall feels now). Again, it was like I was underwater hearing someone speaking to me, had run out of air, and was exhausted. Now I feel like I'm on land, breathing air and hearing with no barriers between me and the source of sound, and I've had a good night's sleep and I'm wide awake. Also... that hematoma in my brain was not just fucking up my memory, it was worsening my hearing, because my hearing simply IS better now.

Lmao so much for me testing how ALG or Comprehensible Input Lessons work for someone. My brain was so nerfed before, I think any progress I made was slower than it would normally have been for others. Also it is surprising I was able to learn at all tbh. Based on how I felt before and afte4 my surgery, I clearly did learn a LOT while my brain was nerfed, I just was having trouble recalling and recognizing those things I learned.

#rant #progress #chinese listening experiment #check in #japanese progress #spanish progress #french prohress #chinese progress #my health issues #it feels so good to have my brain working better again truly #its only now that im healing that i realize how Extremely Bad I felt before and was struggling

Notes to self about progress and level of understanding:

Chinese: 595 (1142) hours

French: 8.5 hours

Spanish: 8.5 hours

Japanese: 8 hours

Peppa pig appears to be Level 4 understanding on the Dreaming Spanish roadmap. Based on what people say they understand, many people say at Level 4 they understand Peppa Pig. Level 4 is 300 hours for a language similar to ones people know. Or 600 hours for a language less like ones you know.

Chinese peppa pig: I understand by only listening, very easy. This feels as easy as listening to English. I am almost Level 5 on the Dreaming Spanish Roadmap doubled for Mandarin. So it makes sense this would be easy, and now regular dubbed cartoons for kids to teens and some easier shows for adults (like iPartment) are easy to doable.

French peppa pig: I understand if I look at the video. I do not recognize all words if I listen without looking (like voiture I did not realize was car until I looked), but I can understand enough from only listening to know the main idea of what's going on. To catch all the details, I need to look at the video to see what's going on. So from this result... maybe I am in the middle of Level 4, for French?

Spanish peppa pig: i can follow some phrases without looking, while only listening like "hello everyone, men/people (hermanos), a baby is coming" "a boy or girl, both" and "very interesting." However I didn't know the word for bird, until I looked at the video. I need to look at the video to understand the main idea of most sentences. I can understand the overall main idea if I look at the video, but many words/details that don't have a visual to hint at them I am perplexed by. Mentally this feels harder than listening to French, and much harder than listening to Chinese. I need to focus more intently to the Spanish. So maybe I am at the end of Level 3 in terms of what I understand? This is close to what I was guessing the content I can understand is - anything suggested for Level 3. So Beginner Dreaming Spanish videos, some Intermediate videos, some Spanish Boost Gaming (except the advanced videos - although I understand them enough for them to be fun for me).

Japanese peppa pig: this one is for fun, to check. If I look at the video, I think I understand this one as well as the Spanish one, possibly a bit more. Since I recognize the conjugations of words in Japanese, and I have no idea what the different conjugation endings in Spanish mean. If I don't look, only listening I just catch phrases. "Want to eat" "what?" "Lunch" "strawberry cake" "help me" "quickly." I need to look at what's going on to follow what they're saying fully. I think... I am vaguely familiar with ~4000 Japanese words, from many study activities, and so if I kept watching things I could turn those words from vaguely familiar to quickly-understood and then I would no longer need visuals to give me a hint about what many of those words mean. So I think I have the vocabulary to understand Peppa pig somewhere in my head (peppa pig only has around 5000 unique words), I just would need to watch and listen more. I am vaguely familiar with more Japanese words, in terms of words I studied at some point, than Spanish words. So based on this test, I would imagine I'd get to the point of quickly-understood when listening faster with Japanese than Spanish (not factoring in that Spanish might be easier to pick up/internalize for an English speaker). I have a way stronger internalized model of Japanese grammar, from all those years studying and reviewing and refreshing lol. Again I wonder how things would go if I just... watched the lets plays I have saved, or played the video games I have...

So based on these I'd say:

Mandarin - almost Level 5, feels like Level 5.

French - solid Level 4 listening skills. Still need visuals to understand some words. I think with some cartoon and show watching, to connect words I can read to listening while seeing visuals, my French listening might improve decently fast. I feel my French could catch up to where my Chinese level of understanding is, if I watched more French stuff.

Spanish - somewhere in Level 3. I still need to learn some basic words and grammar to understand some things without visuals. I am fully lacking some basic words. I have to learn many things brand new. Level 3 recommended materials and under will probably be most useful for improving.

Japanese - somewhere in Level 3 maybe toward the end, as the vocabulary is there inside my head somewhere. Like with French, I feel watching more visual stuff would rapidly improve the words I can recognize when only listening.

Some thoughts: studying reading first, like I've always done, seems to mean the phase where I am "confused about grammar when trying to understand something" happens while I'm learning to read. As for French, Chinese, and Japanese, I studied them through reading first (Japanese the least though) and grammar doesn't confuse me when listening. I can't replicate correct grammar when speaking or writing, but I don't have to puzzle out what they mean by X grammar when listening. I just 'get' it. I do remember the stage in Japanese when I was kind of reasing, kind of listening, and I WAS constantly confused by grammar and word order whenever I listened or read.

Then eventually one day it just clicked and I stopped having to intensively think about each sentence. I remember that stage in Chinese and I was mainly reading, so one day the grammar just "was understood" in reading and shows (Chinese captions I'd read) and I didn't need to intensively puzzle out every sentence and word order. That stage also happened in reading for French - one day 1-2 years in, I just stopped having to intensively think about grammar as I read. That phase is really frustrating, as its easy to get overwhelmed by every sentence. I have not had to go through it a second time when listening to Chinese or French. Even Japanese it only comes to mind once in a while, during more complex sentences. With Spanish, the grammar is constantly tripping me up - every single verb slows my understanding and makes me intensely puzzled. Lots of longer sentences confuse me. It is like night and day, how much similar things just Don't trip me up in French. My brain already did the work of puzzling over the word order and grammar, and now at listening speed (like shows or audiobooks) its ONLY words I don't recognize that trip me up - and I usually recognize them as words I've read after a while.

I liked the experience of picking up grammar in reading. If I have to reflect lol. It was an exhausting endeavor sure, but reading is as slow as I need it to be. Listening is so fast, so any confusion prevents me from understanding other parts I would otherwise have understood. So I guess if you learned to read, you could look forward to not having to adjust to the grammar a second time.

#rant #chinese listening experiment #progress #listening progress #nts #note to self #chinese progress #french progress #spanish progress #japanese progress

Read 7 pages of an actual Japanese novel in Kindle app today, looking up some words as I went. Definitely easier than when I tried in summer. Took like 10 or 20 minutes for those 7 pages but hey its better than 5 minutes per page! Which was my initial speed in chinese lol.

I have been using the free lessons in Satori Reader (a japanese graded reader app), so it made me cocky and I wanted to see if I could handle a japanese novel better than last time. I can confirm at least THIS TIME I'm overall following the plot, back in summer I couldn't even do that. I still am vague on some details even with word lookup though, partly due to grammar and partly cause kindles japanese dictionary sometimes gives NO RESULT and neither do its other 2 "definition boxes" giving any result so I'm like well fuck I guess I'll just GUESS this word only then.

Reading a real novel is exciting! And cool! My first time ever in a way, doing it in Japanese.

I'm reading いもうと（新潮文庫), by 赤川次郎. This author was recommended to me before as someone easier to read with nice novels.

I have been eying the novel: 彼岸花が咲く島 by Li Kotomi, an author who's written in Japanese and Chinese. I heard this novel conveys some story elements by writing only in Kanji, then only in hiragana, etc with very creative ways of using writing changes to tell some of the political ramifications of the story. I am assuming that means it will be a HARD read. (Since for starters I can't read words in hiragana-only well, for seconds I don't have the best grasp on Japanese grammar so altering it could drown me). But the concept or the book is SO COOL oh man do I WANT to read it.

#progress #japanese progress #reading progress #i complain about how oddly my japanese is going but it IS steadily improving #it IS noticeably better than 6 months ago. its just also #not like a whole language levrl LEAP if you mnow what i mean #it sort of reminds me of in chinese month 6-12 #when i could JUST start to watch shows without word lookup but it was BRUTAL then just got vaguely easier #same with japanese lets plays and games this year.#or how chinese novels then i transfered from graded readers hard then easier than novels with word lookup being DOABLE #but not easy yet. and i feel im in the graded reader to it feeling easier to tentative real novels zone #like. once thru this zone ill need probablg another half year to feel 'easy' doing this stuff #but for this period howrver long it lasts stuff gets more DOABLE generally #if that makes sense

Holding myself accountable, later today I am going to:

Watch 1 episode of Death Note in Japanese (a show I know very well as I love it). Record how well I understood it.

Watch 1 episode of a Japanese show I have not seen before (probably a romance to make my life easier). Record how well I understood it.

I want to gauge where my listening-only skills are in Japanese currently.

#rant #what is my tag going to be for this?#japanese learning #i guess that will work #japanese progress #maybe? so i can find it later?

Little notes:

I tend to do whatever is easiest for me, if there's other options available. If there is a way to look something up, but it is Work, then I'll choose not to look something up. I'm lazy.

So I found this audio drama today, no idea what the title is and still trying to figure out. It's normal for some audio dramas on bilibili to avoid using the actual audio drama title, so they don't get taken down as fast (i imagine), so I usually recognize it if it's something I KNOW (like a priest audio drama) by the author name or character names in the title or description. Today I'm listening to this.

It's interesting. I love the theme song that plays at the end of episodes. Now I really want to know the NAME, so I can try to look up the end song on youtube, since youtube often has audiodrama theme songs on it. And on youtube i could add it to my music playlist. I am forced to finally read rhe title and description, which I had not bothered doing until just now at 2 hours into it. 丁昭 and 程诺文 are the main characters. Still have no idea what the audio drama title is, have any of you heard of it? Edit: I have found the title from the names! 金刚不坏

HAHA I FOUND IT

This is the song I like

This is the other song I like from it, in english:

(This song is on repeat rn because I'm so into the old radio hits vibe of it)

My point is that I would have not read the description, if I hadnt really wanted to save that song to my youtube playlist lol.

So, weibo lets you browse without an account. So I browse, lately looking up 光渊 stuff. Weibo has a click translate feature, so I use it. Because im lazy. I read the first half of a sentence of a post, the second it feels hard, i click to translate instead. I might look at the chinese afterward, and compare it with the translation. But i probably translate a LOT that i could have just... read. I only read the art manhua people share, because i MUST read them. Theres no translate button lol.

So given all this, do I listen to show audio? Not really, if theres subtitles in any language. I rely on the stuff i can read, reading's easier for me. I have to make myself listen to the chinese, and compare it to the subtitles, if i see subtitles.

So I've been watching Guangyuan, obviously. I love MoDu. Ive been watching it with japanese subs. Thankfully, i can barely read japanese (except some kanji since they look like hanzi). So I have HAD to listen to the chinese dialogue. No other choice.

Yesterday I found the modaozushi japanese stage play on bilibili, and of course its only in japanese audio. I have not found anyone make chinese subtitles yet. So i was trying to watch it last night. Baffled I managed to follow what i did.

It reminded me of a couple years ago, I watched the whole Japanese dracula musical with no subtitles because i REALLY WANTED TO SEE IT and thats the only way i could. (Id love to buy the dvd they released once, if anyone ever sees it for sale). My japanese was even worse then. Yet somehow I watched it and followed along.

Me really wanting to do something is a huge motivator, and me having NO OTHER OPTION but to do it in the language.

When RGG Ishin was only available in japanese, no english version was released yet, I got it and played the start. I dont know how I managed to follow enough to follow the main plot but i did. I looked up a translation and explanation video later on the game, and realized i was making guesses on Dialects (and historical forms of words) I had no prior knowledge of when I was playing. If I had known that in advance of playing in japanese, I probably would have felt it was "too hard to try." But I didn't know. And it worked out.

Its funny to me when I go to japanese study for a while, after all this Chinese study I do. Because like... my Chinese and French are probably at similar levels, maybe Chinese is B1 in reading? French is B2? Listening in Chinese is better than my french listening, theyre both intermediate though. Ive learned enough I dont forget how to read what I can read, I dont forget how to understand what I can listen to.

Japanese is like... definitely A2/upper beginner. Its beginner. Or very low intermediate. Its at that point where outside of graded readers, some stuff is SLIGHTLY doable to understand. But it takes intense effort, focus, feels draining to try and understand, and understanding is vague and broad (few details if any). Its like Chinese was 3 years ago for me. It feels wild to feel the drop in comprehension from 80%+ of most things (knowing what the main idea is and some details), to 50% (knowing what some of the main ideas are - if i'm lucky, no details). I am like wow I cant believe I pushed through this phase in French and Chinese, its a draining frustrating phase!

I tried rewatching a couple cdramas I've seen in chinese like 3-4 years ago, and because I notice so many details now it Feels equally hard - but i notice so much more now. And i can realize how general and vague my initial understanding had been. Its like... watching some movie for adults thats complicated at age 10, following the main idea (maybe they save the day!), but then rewatching at age 20 and realizing how many themes the movie has, what its commenting about society, the subversions its doing, the nuanced mystery plot that you didnt even notice being foreshadowed and revealed at age 10.

#rant #progress #chinese progress #japanese progress #chinese listening experiment #Youtube

Testing if listening-only immersion of chinese can result in a decent amount of new vocabulary learned, grammar understood better, and improved listening skills (this part I'm pretty sure will improve), if you already know ~8000+ words and can read at a lower intermediate level (B1). Words heard will be occassionally looked up (once every five minutes, or less often). Expectation: listening-only immersion in materials you could read extensively and understand the main idea of, will result in vocabulary continuing to increase, grammar understood faster, improved listening skills. (I am very much hoping for success with this. I don't see why it wouldn't work).

Testing if listening-only immersion of japanese can result in learning a decent amount of new vocabulary, and an improvement in grammar understanding, and improved listening skills*, if you know 1000-2000 words in a language and it is a language with few cognates to one you already know. Expectation: this may result in some improvements in vocabulary but it will be slower than if audio-visual immersion was done, and if it does not work it may be because not enough common words are already known. I think it's possible, if the learner content I am listening to is the right level for me, I will improve at a normal speed - the same as if I used audio-visual immersion materials (which would be awesome, because audio only materials are easier to fit into my daily schedule).

#rant #progress #chinese progress #japanese progress #listening progress #comprehensible input method #i see a lot of people in Dreaming Spanish do fine switching to mostly or only audio-only immersion once they're level 5 #at 600 hours and 5000 words known.#and at 150 to 300 hours if they use easy beginner learner made podcasts (spanish has cognates to english #so i think my chinese knowledge (8000+ words) is enough to switch to learning from audio-only resources if i wanted to #i will say while chinese doesn't have the cognate benefit it DOES have the benefit that once you know a lot of hanzi then new words become #easier to guess.#and with japanese i know around 1000 words WELL by sound and then i know around 4000 words total from sounds OR kanji #i am hoping that is enough words to use learner podcasts/stuff for beginners thats audio only (which for spanish learners requires knowing #1500 words to 3000 words)#experiment

observations: my current japanese level

I know a much higher amount of words in video games, compared to other media. Maybe part of that is that I can look at kanji in video game text to help figure out what's going on, because when playing video games I can play with no word lookups if I want. But part of it, is just the vocabulary I know, because just listening to a Let's Play in the background or video game cutscenes, I can understand more individual words and sentences compared with other media. As in I can understand actual chunks of sentences and some full sentences.

In contrast, when I watched Inuyasha this week I understood... guy koistu, here koko, there soko, over there asoko, the necklace thing shinto yama, yokai, uchi, tabetai, and names. That's about it. When I watched Samurai Cat episode 1, I understood a few small bits about food/cleaning, and everything else I guessed the plot with the visual context. When I watched Criminologist Himura, I understood a decent portion of the dialogue and some chunks of the detective explanations... but 1. it's a crime drama so I could guess a LOT based on each scene, and 2. it had japanese subs on screen so I could rely on kanji/hanzi similarities in meaning and the visual context to guess a lot. Criminologist Himura was a lot more understandable to me, compared to Inuyasha (where yokai was the only genre-specific word I knew ToT).

My amount of words known in books... I haven't read in a while so unknown. I listened to the beginning of Vampire Hunter D audiobook a month or so back, and I think I knew more words in that compared to in Inuyasha or Samurai Cat. Because I could follow some of the dialogue, and some chunks of descriptions. However... Vampire Hunter D had words like dark, blood, learn... just the kind of words I have run into in video games... Also, I did look up a keyword every 3 minutes or so when listening, whereas with the shows I've looked up nothing. I haven't tried to read anything I haven't read before in English. I tried reading some of the Guardian japanese translation a while back, I could follow the main idea, but I could rely on kanji/hanzi meaning similarities. When I read video games, same thing, I can rely on kanji/hanzi meaning similarities. So I think my reading skill is artificially 'inflated.' Because I don't know how to pronounce most of what I'm reading, don't know the exact definitions of those kanji words, and am just using near-cognates to chinese to guess a lot.

#rant #progress #japanese progress #october progress #maybe i'll just embrace it and go back to video game studying later... which ill do anyway #but i do need to do Satori Reader AFTER Glossika.#i NEED to reinforce sound/reading together for a while.#video games don't give me sound with a lot of the text #and i desperately need to learn the proper prounciation for a LOT of kanji words

Been reading one of the Two Minute Mysteries books in Japanese. Kind of amazing how in some chapters, I've got 40+ new vocab words (fuck you, Cyril Makin! Stop making up war stories! I'd tell you to be yourself, but you're such a tool) and in others it's less than 20 and I can guess half of them by context, and it's more about making sure I get the reading correct.

But I have been able to figure many of them out, which is cool. Not the baseball one though. No, not everybody knows how many feet it is between the pitcher's plate and home base. Grumble.

I remember reading one of these in 2nd or 3rd grade or something and being excited that I knew the answer based on the fact that penguins don't live in the Arctic, only the Antarctic...

#reading #japanese progress