#march progress

[smallerthantherain]

[rigelmejo]

In updates:

I'm not as organized with study plans as I used to be and honestly that won't change for a while. That said, I do have 2 challenges I'm trying for myself. I don't know if I'll accomplish them, but just the fact I'm Trying to is getting me to study more. So we'll see where I am in April on these.

1. Listening through Japanese Fluency 1-3 Glossika files

I'm on file 10 out of 104 in Japanese 1. Then there's 104 files in each of the other two files. On the upside? I think even in such a small amount of files listened to so far, in some ways these files have already covered more than what i ever managed to hear in Japanese Pimsleur 1. I think I've heard at least 100 words so far, and a lot of grammar examples in sentence patterns (maybe 20? Maybe 30). I think JapaneseAudioLessons.com's 36 lessons probably cover grammar faster, but I'm not sure if they cover as much vocab as Glossika aims for (which is 3000 sentences, and 2000-3000 words). They might, but I don't know for sure. Also on the upside - the glossika files are easy to listen to, I can pick up stuff from them even when I'm working too or driving or playing games. So it should be easier to stick to using them ToT (just like it was for Chinese Spoonfed audio files).

My goal right now is to keep listening until I finish. In an effort not to give up ToT I'd like to be through the first module Japanese 1 by the end of April. But honestly if it takes longer thats fine. I just want to try to focus on progressing through it for as long as i can. I think it's an easy way right now for me to reinforce what I know, learn more words in a structured way (Clozemaster is a good backup but isn't as structured), improve my listening comprehension (which will make learning from Clozemaster audio later less intensive, learning from anything else where I need quick listening skill), get used to understanding the things I know faster (lately I've tried a bit of Japanese immersion and it's so Clear to me that 50% of my comprehension issues are a speed problem... I'm failing to comprehend a lot of stuff I've studied and just don't recognize instantly). If and when I get bored, I plan to either immerse in video games again or watch lets plays, or try listening reading method.

I've been watching a few Japanese lets plays on YouTube (and found Final Fantasy X and Kingdom Hearts in Japanese on there). And I think with things like that, which I'm already familiar with in English, I can just enjoy and pick up some stuff. But I'd like to get my listening comprehension to a better level before making immersion my only study plan for a while lol. Because right now so much I could be reinforcing is going over my head.

I think audio focused Japanese study still is suiting me, like it was last summer. Reading is still mostly Stronger as a skill despite me not purposely trying to study it so much. I think it's because written Japanese has clearer grammar distinctions for me, and the Kanji are like "similar cognates" enough of the time they help me much more than when I'm just hearing a word. So I'm going to continue most purposeful study plans using audio. After I'm sick of glossika, like I said I want to probably use mainly lets plays with audio or listening resding method (so I can hear sound constantly with all the new words). One of my biggest problems with picking up Japanese words is the all kana words, and the Kanji pronunciations.

2. Reading through Zhenhun. With audio playing (optional).

In my dream world I finish this in 2 weeks. In A Nice situation, I finish this in a month. Realistically? I'm hoping I just get further into the novel before giving up than last time lol.

I genuinely think if I just read MORE quantity wise, my reading skill will get better - reading speed, words I learn etc. And I just really want to read it! I was reading my print version, which has extra scenes I love, and I was figuring out plenty of words from context even if I didn't get every detail.

I started reading the webnovel version in my ebook reader Moonreader (although Idiom or Pleco would also work), because it will play the audio aloud as I read. It's helping me read faster instead of dwelling on a hard portion, which is nice. It's also making me recognize what I know faster since I've got less time to recognize it before the audio moves on. I'm getting somewhat less time to figure out new words, but honestly a majority of unknown words priest uses get clarified by the context after a couple paragraphs if they're important. Like I'd forgotten a few words that I just saw enough to remember again. And then the obvious benefit - audio is making me hear all the hanzi pronunciations I forgot and the pronunciations for new ones (like I forgot 拐 was guai until I kept hearing it, I kept guessing it was ling). I think using the audio is making me read faster ultimately (and more well rounded study since I've got visual text and audio listening) even though it means I have to set myself up to do it with more effort.

Anyway! Surprisingly Moonreader app is making me more motivated to read. Why? This:

At the bottom of the page it shows me how many digital pages I've read, and the percentage I've read. I restarted reading yesterday, and today I'm at 50/901 pages, 5.3% read. Just this amount of detail is really motivating for me ToT. Honestly I think it's because it shows me how far ive come, and helps me plan how long it will realistically take. 5% took me about 2 hours. So like. 40 hours to finish this at my reading pace. Oh god. But also? Hey, on the other hand?! Now I know if I just spend 2 hours a day I could finish this in 20 days. If I had some days I got really into it, I could maybe finish faster. I very much have the Urge to see 10% down there lol. And that urge to keep progressing is helping me ignore my urge to pause and re-read the vague parts.

I read a guy's advice on improving in another language and they said to read a webnovel (300 pages) in 2 weeks. Ad one of your first novels. And try not to take longer. And while that is a brutal goal for a beginner, I do agree the more you read the easier it gets and the quicker it gets. When I read xiao wangzi it took me 2 weeks for those under 100 pages. But I did make myself finish it in a couple weeks. Now my reading level is higher, and I can probably get myself to finish at least 300 pages of this in 2 weeks. ToT my reading level is probably decent enough to manage that. That's only 1/3 of guardian tho lol (clearly that guy wasn't reading chinese webnovels).

I saw another person who really motivated me to just wanr to read MORE:

Tarvos basically did what I did for French. But way better than I did (more extensive reading and harder material). And it clearly worked. And I remember it worked for me too - read and follow the main idea, don't worry about what you can't comprehend or what is vague. Then somehow the next book is a bit easier. Then later you go back and read at a level that used to be challenging and you comprehend way more.

I know that in chinese at least (and French ToT) I know enough words that I do not need to stop and look words up to keep reading. I can follow the main plot, and so if Mt goals extensive reading then I just have to DO IT. Just read 2000 pages lol! And the more pages I get through, I know the easier it will get later on! I just need to push through the initial hurdle and READ MORE ToT.

I am going to be so overjoyed and shocked later if I push through a bunch of a novel now, and later find I understand more and read faster.

I already see results of that, from back when I made myself read like 60 chapters of a pingxie fic last summer lol! Now, going back to stuff at that level? I open up tsomd or SCI something brand new to me and realize I can also follow the main overall idea without a dictionary now. Whereas I used to usually need to look up some words in the first chapters of new stories just to pick up some key genre words and recognize names. But clearly my reading level increased from just reading more last time. Now some old stories I could understand okay generally without a dictationary I now follow almost all details (tamendegushi, dmbj, saye). And stuff I needed to do some initial prep work for, I could now just read extensively and follow the main idea, if I wanted. I'd probably get used to them if I just Kept Reading. So like... I definitely think... I just need to push through that awkward feeling of not quite full comprehension, and just read MORE. ToT

And. First: I know that advice works... I know I've just Read MORE before, then later I just Could read and comprehend more easier. Second: I know more pages is just what's needed to improve reading speed... ;-; I remember reading once an article which suggested 8k-10k words to get a native like reading speed and comprehension of vocab. More pages for some languages, but that was the basic idea. And tbh it sounds logical to me, because I'm sure I read that much in my native language before I comprehended novels like I do as an adult.

An FYI to anyone trying to learn Chinese by extensive reading: I can confirm it will work. At minimum I would recommend you either start with graded readers at your level, or else familiarize yourself with 2000 common words before starting (you don't need them memorized but you should probably know 1000 common words decently and fairly certainly know what they are if you see them, recognize and be able to guess 1000 more, and recognize at least 1200 hanzi enough to guess pinyin to look up in a dictionary on occasion). If you start with intensive reading, you can start with less vocab knowledge. If you plan on extensive reading, at least vaguely recognizing 2000 words will be enough to find some webnovels you'll be able to follow the main idea of without a dictionary (and many manhua). So about 6 months - 1.5 years into study (depending on how fast you study vocab) or earlier if you start with graded readers (theres some graded readers you could probably start within a few months of starting to study, then you can continue fairly comfortably with graded readers until you learn 1000 hanzi or more, some amount more vocab, and are up for looking for webnovels). There's a lot of nice graded readers made from 100 hanzi, to 2000 hanzi. From 100 unique words, to 3000 unique words (I think some even go up to 5000 unique words for chinese). But once you're vaguely familiar with 2000 common words? You know enough to start reading some webnovels extensively, if you're up for it.

And it will work. You will gradually pick up more from context. (As usual, yes, intensive reading and/or SRS flashcards will help you pick up vocab faster, but you'll gradually improve too just from the extensive reading). You will gradually increase your grammar understanding, vocab, reading speed, ans reading comprehension.

Only things I needed to be ready to learn from extensively reading? 1. Vaguely familiar with 1500 common words (but I'd recommend someone less eager than me prep with 2000 words so they run into less unknowns to annoy them). 2. Vague knowledge of the Chinese radicals (skills like being able to go 拐 is the hand and the 另 hanzi, and break down new hanzi you see into recognizable components, will help you guess pinyin to look up when needed based on one of the building blocks pinyins, and help you guess the meaning of new hanzi - 拐 shows up in abduct/turn/corner and thinking of it as hand-another like another's hand giving you directions to turn, another's hands grabbing to abduct, another's hand reaching around a 拐角 corner etc will help you remember the new hanzi. It is beneficial to know beforehand about radicals, how sometimes one hints pronunciation and one hints meaning). 3. Ability to follow the bare minimum main idea of what's going on in the story. If you can't even do thar, the reading material is too difficult. If you can follow the basic main idea, it's okay even if a TON of details are incomprehensible or vague, because you comprehend enough context to gradually keep picking up more. (Although the More you understand the less effort it will take you to pick up more from context). So say you're reading Alice in Wonderland - if you can grasp "there's a girl Alice, there's a rabbit she interacts somehow with, she follows it and ends up in a new place" then congrats you understand enough of chapter 1 to read it extensively. You could also understand more like "alice was bored, the rabbit is late, Alice falls down a hole, Alice is sad as she falls." But even just the bare minimum is enough. The more you understand of the basic main idea, the easier a read it will be. When I started reading in French a ton of stuff I only followed the basic main idea, and I just kept reading extensively and things got easier lol. (And if you're impatient or want to read intensively, feel free to read these less comprehensive things with some word look up to speed up how fast you learn new vocab, until you're sick of looking up vocab and just want to read extensively again - I kept reading intensively until I got to about 2000 known words, and from 1000-2000 words in chinese I kept switching between extensive and then intensive to pick up a few hundred words faster).

4. Optional - Some prior grammar knowledge like reading a grammar guide or having some class/textbook prep etc (not necessary, but it helps seeing a sentence and having some vague guess what's a noun verb adjective past tense present future negative positive etc even if there's still complex grammar you don't get yet).

I read on the forum discussions about getting into extensive reading, the question "well thar worked with Swedish, but would a language like chinese take more prep work?" Because chinese requires hanzi recognition, word and phrase parsing without spaces, and less cognates. And how to pronounce the words you're picking up.

The person above prepped with FSI, and had the benefit of cognates. But I'd still imagine that added up to 1000-2000 words basis of knowledge and some grammar basics before they started learning from reading extensively. Which was about the same amount of prep work I had for chinese. And extensively reading in chinese worked fine for me with that much prior knowledge. So I think extensive resding is very doable at that level in chinese.

How I'd address the concerns:

1. Hanzi. If you know around 1000 and have some familiarity with radicals, picking up hanzi is not too bad when reading extensively. Pick graded readers if you want less unknown hanzi per page, and as you gradually pick up more hanzi comprehension from context you will find you stop running into as many critical unknown ones. Also hanzi pickup is tied in with vocab pick up. You'll learn 方向 as direction then 方向盘 as steering wheel (direction wheel) and realize 方 is often direction related, 盘 is often a circle shape thing then see 盘子 as plate then see 椅子 as chair and realize 子 is part of some nouns. You'll also see 椅子 and realize 椅 it's the tree wood radical and then the yi part like in 倚 for a chair (a sometimes wood thing pronounced yi). Or hug 抱, you see the the sound from 包 bao like bread 包子 and the hand radical. A word maybe with pinyin bao that has to do with hands and is someone touching someone. Once you know enough hanzi, you start to remember new hanzi easier as built of components you've seen before. Same applies to new words - you know one word with a hanzi, then see a new word with that hanzi, and either its 2 hanzi you know in a new combo or only 1 new unknown hanzi. But you have some building blocks to guess the new words. You can't rely on cognates like with English to French, but as you learn more hanzi they help you guess words like cognate similarities do. If too many unknown hanzi keep popping up and it's driving you up a wall? Move to graded readers for a while until you pick up more (so the book is made to teach you them) or read intensively for a while until the remaining unknown hanzi get easier to handle (that happened for me after knowing about 1500 hanzi and finally new unknown hanzi i couldnt fathom at all stopped popping up so much).

2. Word boundaries. Genuinely, just read Chinese more. Start with graded readers so the grammar isn't confusing you as much. Read more. It gets fairly natural to parse Chinese word/phrase boundaries after enough practice. Grammar constructions and function words and time phrases separate phrases quite clearly if you recognize 有 没有 了 以后 以前 就是 的 得 地 那个 那些 来 会 在 过了 过 一会 去. And they're all common so you'll pick them up soon. Chinese words are usually 1 character (if super common), 2 characters (most of what you'll see), 4 characters (idioms and phrases, and a lot of the 2 compound words like 路灯literally streetlight (and 3 character words like 方向盘 literally direction plate/steering wheel) are fairly understandable compounds if you know the hanzi. So you will quickly get to a point where you run into sentences where the unknowns are verbs or nouns or phrases you don't know (you may not know an adjective/descriptor but it's often followed by 的 地 so you'll know it's a part of that). A lot of the phrases will be 4 character chunks and be 2 words combined or 4 words combined. A lot of the nouns and verbs will be words acting on other words (verbs). Basically... the more you read the clearer it gets where the usual word boundaries are. I recommend more graded readers if the lack of spaces is bothering you, I think it's just a matter of getting used to it with practice (and graded readers will ensure there's less distractions and more focus on just parsing word phrase boundaries). Once you're used to word boundaries, it will not be as much of a struggle in harder materials. I'd imagine this is similarly true when applied to Japanese. Japanese grammar and conjugatjon and use of Kanji, use of particles, helps separate sentence elements. For me the tricky part is knowing when kana words are nouns and not conjugation, but I think i just haven't practiced enough.

For pronunciation of hanzi/words you're learning while extensively reading: many people solve that problem either by reading with audio for chinese (to hear the words), or doing listening study separately such as doing audio only extensive listening, or watching dramas with chinese subs so you get some reinforcement of hanzi wirh their pronunciation at some point. While you can guess the pinyin sometimes from the hanzi parts, it's not always right. So with chinese I think doing some additional listening including studying is just necessary for fully learning words. You can still learn to read plenty of words just extensively reading and figure a vague pronunciation for it (which is how I know a lot of more obscure English words I probably do not pronounce correctly). But yeah eventually if you think it's a word that would be useful to pronounce correct, you'll want to do some listening study. Either separately studying the sound of words you want to recognize in listening (with audiobooks, audio lessons, watching shows, convos, dictionary with audio lookup, srs, or reading with listening etc) or understand you may "relearn" a lot of the important words by first hearing them and later learning their spelling, or by first reading them and later finish learning them when you hear them in a podcast or show or conversation. (Even if you totally incorrectly guess a hanzi pronunciation, you'll eventually hear the word used again in some audio like an audiobook or show or convo and realize it's the hanzi word you learned, and you'll fix your pronunciation... the same way I couldn't pronounce futile or windowsill or rogue until I heard them a few times). As long as you are doing some reading and some listening activities, you will eventually pick up both aspects of words. You can speed it up by purposely studying both aspects together, but either way it will be okay. As a total beginner? Audio with graded readers, dialogue with transcripts and audio, shows with chinese subs, srs flashcards or apps with audio and text, will help you pick up both listening and reading recognition of a lot of the common words asap.

Tldr: extensive working does work for chinese too.

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Summary of study plan:

1. Going through glossika japanese 1 (by end of April hopefully we'll see)

2. Going through 300 pages (33%) of zhenhun (within a few weeks hopefully)

Future study plan:

1. If I get bored/done with glossika japanese, watching a full lets play of KH or FFX, or doing a Listening Reading Method experiment with a Japanese Duoreader story.

2. If I get done with zhenhun? Somehow? And I'm done with japanese glossika - switch to listen to Chinese Spoonfed audio files and FINISH THEM THIS TIME. If I'm not ready for audio study? Continue with zhenhun... or continue on reading another novel probably qi ye, tian ya ke, silent reading, or who knows honestly I have a lot of options. Lazy option: if my manhua I ordered come in, just read them uvu.

[theunstuffedpepper]

Wrapped up the work week with some decent stats! These are recaps from Thursday and Friday 2/28 and 3/1. I’m happy to be kicking off the month of March with some solid activity and good momentum.

Waking up this morning, I’m realizing that my abs and calves are feeling pretty sore. Such a good feeling. 💪🏻

[rigelmejo]

Can we talk about homonyms ToT (is that what it’s called when words sound the same??)

Nothing to say really just I learned 要る just now and was like いる, again, just like to exist for animate objects???

Fun fact I have a book in all romaji called “Japanese in 30 hours” and it’s old and free in archive.org and it is useful but like without kanji the homonyms... remembering them is a hellscape...

Oh man the homonyms...

[rigelmejo]

march - just some thoughts

i have read more this month than any other month? and its not slowing down its only 3/12 so i have 2/3 of a month to go and i’ve read 26 chapters. even if these chapters are ‘short’ at 10 pages, if i wanna count by ‘20 page’ chunks i’ve still read 13 chunks so far. and i’ve still got more time in the month left. most other months i’ve managed to read ‘a lot’ i read 10-20 chapters. so i’m doing really good.

grammar is a weird thing? in reading i feel like its quite easy now to understand. when listening or watching - same. and yet if asked ‘why do i say/type X’ or ‘why is it written/spoken like X’ i have absolutely no explanation in my head. i could not explain the grammar if prompted. this puts me in a weird place and i feel like i SHOULD go over a grammar guide again just so i can WORD what i’m intuitively understanding.

this is a bit bizarre to me because within the first 6 months of study i DID read through an entire grammar guide just to get an idea of what i was about to look at, and it hardly made sense once actually reading/watching/listening. i understood the guide fine, but actually Seeing chinese i was still confused. i would reference AllSetLearning’s Chinese Wiki on some basic points, then after 6 months i just stopped. now its been what 1.5 years and - reading is so easy, listening is so easy, grammar wise. none of the grammar confuses me. but i no longer ‘explicitly’ have any idea what the fuck the grammar is. i used to. i studied it explicitly before trying to read/listen. and yet now that i can read/listen, i have no idea how to explain the grammar. i can listen to a podcast and i don’t think about what the grammar is i just get it. i read and just know what i’m looking at. its like english - i cannot fucking explain it. Which makes speaking/writing a bit hard. Because when i try to check if i’m right i have no fucking clue HOW anymore - i just say/write what comes to mind and HOPE it makes sense. i have no way to conciously check for errors except ‘does this feel right’? And that’s not good enough for me lol. So I definitely do need to eventually read a grammar guide for explicit explanations again.

Technically I think “English and Chinese Grammar Side By Side” grammar book would be an excellent one to use. Because i read the first 50 pages of it and it compared it to english (so it explained english too), and it was very easy to understand and started basic then got more involved. 

I’m probably gonna use my very old Chinese Grammar Self Taught by Thimm book instead. Just because I really like that book. Then I guess use another after (probably Basic Chinese Sentence Patterns since its modern and perfect for ‘catch your own mistakes’ study and much shorter than Eng+Chinese Grammar side by side). 

Anyway I’m in a very weird place right now lol. I know i’m understanding grammar that is stuff I never even studied initially in the grammar guide, but unable to explain what it is, and a lot of stuff i did explicitly study in a grammar guide i completely forgot the explanation for. My reading and listening is GREAT, because all my effort only has to go into learning new words lately! its relaxing! Its the only part i need to do! But my writing/speaking i am very concerned about because being able to check myself for mistakes is something i’d like the ability to do.

how grammar is presented really makes a difference in how well i get it. there is some serious benefit to ‘show simple first then build up what you know’ that text books tend to prefer. versus like grammar reference books that may start with some in depth stuff.

i tried to read a japanese grammar guide the other day and 1 it was great but 2 it covered some ADVANCED stuff i never learned in genki 1+2, and so it was Explicit grammar description of stuff i had literally years ago been immersing in japanese and Still not conciously known about. So i felt. Overwhelmed lol. I felt so confused. I feel like I might switch to Tae Kim’s grammar guide primarily just because its structured with basics covered first. and i feel like until the basics are again glued into my brain, seeing even more advanced stuff just confused me so much i had no idea how to remember it. which is funny because? my usual strategy with grammar guides is to just read it and let what sticks stick and what is confusing be moved on from, in the hope i will later see it again and understand it better. so like based on what i usually do i should’ve just been able to read through it (and i’m gonna try anyway lol). but truly japanese grammar just... my mind does not like wrapping around it and remembering it. (chinese grammar is so much easier for me... so much easier....;-; )

i have been tempted to just Restart Nukemarine’s LLJ (Lets Learn Japanese) memrise decks, because I KNOW they worked for me last time really really well. And they include Tae Kim grammar lessons. And I know if i did it then maybe i’d get back to where i was years ago pretty fast.

I tried Earthlingo app. Its a cool idea, I don’t think its worth it though unless you planned to get Rosetta Stone (since Earthlingo is FREE). Earthlingo features 1000 words per language, taught to you by exploring video game worlds as an alien. Its a cool concept, but since all words seem to be nouns then you aren’t even learning the most common verbs/adjectives. And 1000 words is not a lot. And you could learn 1000 quite fast if using srs flashcards like Memrise or Anki (think weeks if you push yourself, and a month or two months if going at a regular pace). Earthlingo you have to slowly explore the worlds so that eats time, you have to choose to test yourself (so you don’t review nearly as often as flashcard apps), and one test includes walking around the world clicking the object which you’re given the word for (takes time to find the right object). All this means a word that might take maybe 15 minutes to study over a few weeks, might instead take much longer to study and learn. I don’t use duolingo because it generally covers so few words (usually 2000-4000 i think which is good for a beginner resource but you have to do the WHOLE course to get to all those words and i take so long on duolingo that could take YEARS for me versus a month on a flashcard app or clozemaster). Duolingo I also don’t use because it very slowly paces learning material (it takes me months/years to get through 1000 words on duolingo - just personally i go so slow on it, i think faster people would find a use for it). Likewise Lingodeer takes me AGES to get through (and i think covers 2000 words nowadays? I’m shocked Duolingo has more words for the japanese course tbh). However, Lingodeer is by far the best ‘app’ for Japanese grammar lessons in app practice form. Even if basically all the apps feel pretty slow to me in how fast they give you new info. Earthlingo is cool that its free, and for learners 12 and under i think it would be super useful as a way to engage them and keep them studying (since what child likes flashcards? whereas as a child i would’ve loved this). But as an adult Earthlingo is sooooo slow on how fast you can learn words, and it does not even offer very many words (1000 is a nice bare minimum but without verbs/adjectives it can only be a supplementary learning tool for beginners at best).

Link about Lingodeer having 2000 words in a course. (Since its SO hard to lookup how much vocabulary lingodeer includes :c )

Nukemarine’s LLJ memrise decks (which I’m considering going through again but ToT agh flashcardssssss.... they sure do work though agh)

http://www.chinese-grammar.com/beginner/ - this is the site I read a chinese grammar guide on at like Month 3. I am rereading it now maybe it will help me remember wtf grammar explicitly is. ToT (A tip, read Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced sections). Last time I visited the site you just clicked a section, then saw each fully explained grammar point and clicked ‘next’ it was nice. Now its laid out a little less ideal for me, but its still got all the same nice info! (Also honestly if you are a beginner I really DO like this grammar guide... it introduces basic info first, gradually gets more complex, and i could follow its logic knowing like 200 hanzi and 100 words ToT. its very easy to understand even if it takes a while to apply that info).

im probably gonna read hanshe more today. i’m at the point where either i know enough vocab, or the writers style has just ‘clicked’ idk. but now i just am not getting bogged down by unknown words and am just. speeding through enjoying the plot. Also rip me this novel has 155 chapters and im only on chapter 30.

watching japanese lets plays is really fun! i feel like im 3 years old cause i just see nouns i can learn pretty easy in context cause i know the game well, and hear some vaguely familiar verbs, but its fun! also it helps i know kingdom hearts 2 like by heart so. a lot of it makes me instantly cheerful and nostalgic. roxas’s voice is so cute in the japanese version.

oh i almost forgot: I found a book recently for chinese that for it’s like 10 page grammar guide summary at the beginning ALONE i think is more than worth the 4 dollars it costs to get. It has a ton of compound words and its a reference book in mandarin and cantonese (it has pronunciation for both, all characters are in traditional). I got it initally because it as a bunch of compound words and I’d like to get better at knowing a lot of common ones. But the intro to the book has a page explaining sentence structures in chinese, then examples. Its so straightforward and to the point. I love it. The book is “Understanding Chinese: A Guide to the Usage of Chinese Characters” by Rita Mei-Wah Choy. (There is also a companion book for individual hanzi, which is nice but this book specifically I’m finding more useful).

what i really like about Listening-Reading method, and reading, as study activities: no matter how I do them it is only improvement. I have a tendency to ‘redo’ material i don’t feel i fully mastered, or refuse to move on. So when i have duolingo, flashcards (sometimes i can move on if i ignore reviews/make myself do new stuff), books, grammar guides, self guided classes - i have a tendency to redo the material. over and over. and not progress and challenge myself. whereas with reading - every time i look up a word its useful because its new or something i clearly Need to review (not something i’ve actually learned and can move past reviewing). so whether i reread material or read new stuff, as long as i run into things i find somewhat challenging (feel the desire to word look up), i know i am running into new material i can learn. Same with listening-reading method: whether i finish a book or just skip to random books, any new chapter i do will give me new words to learn/remember (until i’ve reached a point of perfect listening comprehension which is a WAYS away). There’s no way for me to mess it up. I can give up a book im bored with, i don’t have to stick to one resource to the end. 

someone tell me why professionally made chinese audio books almost NEVER line up to the chapters???? whyyyyy ;-;

Even More Notes lol:

So I read so much in Pleco, which auto pronounces, I have COMPLETELY forgot. 得 地 - for these two, when they’re attached after a description like 淡淡 慢慢 高兴 etc, when are they pronounced di versus de???? i’m pretty sure  得 is pronounced de when its an adjective like ‘-ly’. but for  地, i don’t remember if when part of a describer if its pronounced di or de????

[rigelmejo]

mildly related now that i can read a big number of hanzi i am so grateful when i see them IN japanese because i can instantly guess the new japanese word or at LEAST remember it easier because its similar to hanzi i recognize and just seeing something i recognize makes things stick in my mind better. (i think just the word ‘class’ like i have to go to class had totally new kanji). also i’m grateful a lot of kanji either look traditional or like they were simplified in a Different way than chinese simplified hanzi because they look familiar enough to recognize but DIFFERENT enough i can remember its a separate word (since if its in japanese the words rarely line up one to one in meaning and even if they did the sounds never do so its good they ring as ‘different but similar’ in my mind).

now that i recognize hanzi when i learn new words all THOSE are the easier words to remember (except how tf to pronounce them) and all the kana words my mind is just like ‘do we know that one? do we?’ (although kana words are understandably easier to remember the pronunciation of since i can SEE it spelled out. the word for ‘busy’ is like isogashi(i)? i think? and i can’t remember the ‘oga’ part at all i see ‘iso - shi’ and then hear the audio and go GA I FORGOT GA. cause its part of the kanji pronunciation and i can’t remember it on sight lol. but the meaning of the word i didn’t even need a definition for since its the same hanzi chinese uses for busy ‘mang.’ 

idk how many hanzi I know but its upwards of 1500, it might be 2000 now? idk i still run into some new ones but thankfully as i read usually new chinese words i know at least 1 of the hanzi in the words. which makes it easier to guess meaning/remember. since if i have something recognizable i can always remember easier. I just learned qifen today which is atmosphere. 气氛 - qi i knew, and is usually related to air or atmosphere of a scene/event/place so it was an easy word to guess. fen is easy to guess pronunciation since fen is right there, and qi is the other radical which ‘clicks’ since its air/atmosphere and hinting at fen’s meaning - and the hanzi ‘fen’ literally means atmosphere. so qifen = atmosphere is a really easy word to learn. and  氛 is an easy hanzi to understand. so i’ve picked up a lot of hanzi like this - i recognize them in a word, and maybe don’t have them memorized yet but i recognize them pretty fast and it’ll stick if i see it a few more times.

well anyway, because i know much more hanzi than i knew kanji (visual recognition) back when i studied japanese last time, the kanji are much... easier to grasp meaning from. still struggle like wild to remember how to pronounce them in words. but their meanings are so much easier just because i know so MANY the new japanese words now often have some familiar/similar aspect i can recognize and connect meaning to in order to remember easier.

so i just looked up 静か shizuka (quiet), and it has the same hanzi as 静静 and yet??? to my eyes they looked so different lol. i think maybe kanji just use more traditional hanzi characters/simplifed others in their own way which overall gives them a slightly different appearance. (and my brain just refuses to see them as the same apparently lol)

[rigelmejo]

March - Listening Reading Method

This post will be updated probably.

Will I do any Guardian, who knows?

The Glass Maiden (Love and Redemption Novel):

Chapters done: 5 

chapter: 6  at paragraph:  However, the Hairpin Hall at the top of the mountain was still in chaos. He Danping was so worried that she fainted, and Chu Yinghong is busy taking care of her. Linglong was still pestering her father to go in her sister’s place, but he refused to agree. audio: 17

*Note that audio does not line up to chapters, 3 audiobook chapters seems to = the first written chapter. (as of chapter 4 the audio stopped ever lining up, now audio ends in random places in chapters :/ )

*Note I have not read the english chapter ahead, so I’m skimming slightly then matching audio to text. Thankfully its working fine as Liuli is not written too complexly, and the audio matches up very closely to the translation so I am not losing my place.

I only did chinese audio/english text for this one. I have the chinese book so I’ll read it if/when I feel like it. I’m already reading plenty of chinese I don’t need to with l-r.

Is it working out? Yeah I’m catching some new words! And as usual its nice to catch chunks and phrases. Listening Reading method works really well for me - picking up some new words/phrases and building up listening skills for words I partly know. 

Also a personal note: its the easiest xianxia genre novel I’ve tried this with (easier to follow than 2ha), and i like Xuanji’s audiobook voice.

Japanese Audio Lessons:

Lessons done: 1

Listening to the japanese audio lesson while following along with the transcript.

This is literally what the L-R method site had described as the ideal way to do L-R for languages like japanese as a beginner (english, japanese, romaji all next to each other to compare). So I’m curious if it works to be honest. Regardless of it it ‘works’ like L-R, it is good review for me both listening to stuff I learned once years ago and reading (getting some refresher on how everything is spelled).

Guardian:

Chapters done: 2

*none done this month as of 3/10

Doing chinese audio - english text. 

Also reading the english beforehand, and reading the chinese extensively as desired (although I’m no longer going to try to match the chinese audio to the chinese text because my print novel has so many added/changed scenes it makes following along difficult).

---

Unrelated to L-R method, I’m just reading 寒舍 and am on chapter 24. I might listen to the audio but it slows down my reading speed so mostly I’m just reading. As of the last few chapters I’ve had to look up a lot less words/been able to speed through more. So I’m really hoping my reading speed overall stops dragging as much. (Currently 15 minutes for 10 pages, 30 minutes for 20 pages).

*also i have the inexplicable urge to l-r Ever night... as if that wouldn’t take forever ahh i need to prioritize that’s gotta waitttttt

[rigelmejo]

march 3/15/2021

im trying to read through tae kim’s grammar guide right now because i’m officially further in the nukemarine LLJ  memrise decks (there’s tae kim grammar guide sections in there) than i am in actually reading the grammar guide. And obviously these example sentences in the memrise deck would teach me more if i CLEARLY understood why they’re like how they are. which i... need to read the grammar guide section to understand lol.

my goal rn with japanese is? to get further in the nukemarine LLJ decks than i did last time. I’ve already mildly accomplished that (have done officially MORE of the tae kim section than before, have NOT redone the 190 common words i did last time i did this though). there are about 400 more cards in this tae kim section (LLJ 4) and then 1000ish cards in the common word section (LLJ 5). I would love to get them done. 

it would be sweet if i could get them done before April 22?/24? whenever Nier Replicant comes out because then I could play that baby in english and japanese! Then Nier Automata! ToT The Entire thing that kicked me back into wanting to study japanese was my old love for certain video games and desperately wanting to know what their stories/characters are like before translation/localization. So it would be cool if I could play them a little ;-; or at least check out lets plays. 

(which, checking out the kh2 lets play has been going pretty well so far... also that part where namine says “we aren’t meant to exist” and roxas says “how could you say such a thing? even if it were true” he says in japanese like “thats brutal/harsh to say. even if its true.” ...great to know that line is equally raw and heartbreaking in japanese lol. KH2′s localization did real good on like equal vibe to original just like ‘less nuanced’ if that makes sense. also thanks to the chinese hanzi i know now watching the KH2 lets play means i can figure out a lot of noun’s writing even though i don’t catch the pronunciation... also i’m catching a lot of words that mean like ‘beautiful/good’ as in like ‘great move’ and ‘dang’ lol.)

i had to stop myself from redoing the chinese flashcards i’ve done in the past! because i get ‘into a zone’ lol. And i really don’t need to waste time redoing those 2000 cards. i also needed to stop myself from doing the hsk 5-6 cards. because realistically? i know half of them, i should just set a lot to ‘ignore’ on the computer but im too lazy, and i’m learning a lot of vocab from reading right now. i don’t need hsk words to pass any test. The words i’m learning right now in reading are a lot more applicable to the actual shows i watch/things i listen to/things i read. its more useful to me to keep reading. and also to not sidetrack my japanese lol. i have read... 39 chapters this month... this month is only half over! hanshe is truly motivating ToT it also helps the story CONSTANTLY ends on cliffhangers so i keep clicking next chapter. who knows, maybe hanshe will help me kick up my reading speed. it already shaved off 10 minutes per 20 pages - now my 20 pages are down to 30 minutes to read, which is better than a few months ago. hanshe has 155 chapters so i HOPE it speeds up my reading lol.

hanshe is increasing my vocab though, its definitely noticeable over time. and hanshe has really good repetition of vocab which helps with learning and later the payoff means i never have to look up the word in future once its learned while it remains useful to me and i keep being reminded of it. after i get bored of hanshe OR i finish it, whichever comes first, its either back to a priest novel or into another pingxie fanfic written by hanshe’s author. The author did one fanfic that’s only 33 chapters so that would be NICE to do after this one lol ToT

summary of what’s turned out to be my studying methods this month:

Japanese:

reading through grammar guides (the one yue-muffin made and tae kim’s). so just grammar explanation reading.

doing nukemarine LLJ decks (in the ACTUAL order they are in the deck to completion - last time i did like 3 per time and never finished any lol. this is bolded because it’s the primary activity i’m prioritizing). so SRS flashcards. it’s working well right now because i can just put this activity in anytime i have downtime, like when i pause shows (since we know me i gotta take a break from a show every 20 minutes lol). i am bafflingly in a flashcard mood and i’m trying to take advantage of it while i got it. 

*when i feel like it: watching kh2 lets play. so some immersion where i look up words. (and when Nier Replicant remaster releases next month I’m likely to at least a tiny bit try to play it in japanese ToT lol we’ll see)

so grammar reading, srs flashcards covering some grammar/listening/reading/vocab, and some optional immersion.

(a note: i gave up on the japaneseaudiolessons for now because i got bored. its a great resource! i just don’t feel like it right now. and from an efficiency perspective, nukemarine LLJ decks cover vocab, grammar, audio, reading - so I don’t need another resource for that right now).

Chinese:

reading through hanshe. so immersion reading, intensive reading looking up unknown words. (unknown words are happening less so its getting less ‘intense’ lol)

listening to Chinese Spoonfed Audio. so listening to audio flashcards. for building up listening comprehension/repetition to pick up some more common words. (i’ve been doing this during daily walks making it much easier for me to consistently do, doing it mainly to supplement the Reading Heavy study i’m doing, i can drop this and pick it up later if i want since its mostly easy background listening)

*I am slowly rereading the grammar guide on www.chinese-grammar.com for explicit grammar clarification. but this is not a high priority, since I sort of implicitly understand a lot of this and i’m not working on fixing production mistakes yet. i just... miss knowing wtf is going on in the grammar lol.

*when i feel like it: Listening Reading The Glass Maiden/Love and Redemption Novel. I’ve done 2-3 hours of it this past week, but i don’t know when or if I’ll just stop. Thankfully l-r is beneficial somewhat even if i switch up books later. i WANT to L-R you have no idea (to Silent Reading and Guardian REALLY badly lol). But its so time intensive, and requires a lot of focus, and i have to really plan to do it for an hour at a time usually. I am so bad at doing stuff for that long consistently. I was in the mood earlier this week! ToT 

*when i feel like it: watching chinese shows raw. I was super in the mood this month because Word of Honor came out, and Killer and Healer came out, and Rattan came out, and I didn’t want to wait for subs. As a result I watched a LOT of raw episodes this month. However, english subs have caught up and since I’m lazy I’m inclined to just watch the subs - especially since youku ITSELF just put english subs on their most-ahead viewing schedule version of the eps on youku vip. so guess who’s buying youuku vip today? -3-)/ That said... even if I stop for a while, if Rattan subs move too slow I’ll probably watch those raw. And as SOON as 2ha’s drama Immortality drops I am highly likely to watch the raws for that since I likely won’t be able to wait. Watching shows is pretty highly dependent on how much I want to watch something and if subs take a while lol. 

so reading, and listening. and a little listening-reading method too. mainly just working on reading, listening, vocab acquisition. chinese is going good - for a few months now i’ve just had the plan ‘read often while looking up unknown words, and add some listening study activity when i have time.’ It’s simple, and its been working well.  later on down the road i’ll need some explicit grammar clarification again, but this is bare bones enough of a study plan at the moment. i’m clearly picking up words and phrases and hanzi at a reasonable pace. its not the Fastest obviously, but it is causing improvement over time and since i’m enjoying it i see no reason to change it up.

ending things

...who knows WHY i am so well focused this month with so much energy... tbh... i track how many chapters i read a month/audio i listen to/show episodes i watch etc, and this month is like as much as 3 other of my usual months combined. also my japanese has been basically ‘dabbling only’ prior to this month.

 although... maybe in part its how i’ve gotten better at reading hanshe? Reading being easier certainly motivates me TO read more. And watching shows was MUCH easier this month (still not ‘easy’ but following the main plot is) which definitely makes me Want to watch more. Also i am... unbelievably motivated by a challenge. I think i got it in my head that i ‘really want to do more of Nukemarine’s LLJ courses and see how much i understand after them’ and now... i really want them DONE. so maybe the current things motivating me will hold out for a while. 

(On the listening-reading front meanwhile, that activity takes SO much concentration its hard to do if i’m tired, BUT i have so many TRANSLATED novels i want to read recently and honestly its fun hearing the chinese narration and audiobook actors so like... i very much Want to do l-r so i can hear them as i read the translation... immovable object of me tired versus how much i’m interested in them lol ToT).

also thank u thank u @a-whump-muffin for sending me those lets plays because honestly it got me so excited again and its so cool to see them!!! <3 <3 and its so much easier to watch them versus committing to playing a whole game myself just yet ToT