#update: jpn

[pai-seh]

mandarin/japanese/life update

Soooo... the last update I posted was in July. I came back to Germany in late September and things didn’t work out the way I had expected them to. Long story short: my mental health took a nose dive and I didn’t feel like studying at all.

I’m feeling better now and at least for Mandarin I’m back on track! Japanese... not so much.

Mandarin Update #4: Starting from January, I started reading a lot again. Then I listened to podcasts more. Now I’m more into watching youtube videos. What I did/do: - use the New York Times’ Mandarin app to read articles - started listening to the 故事FM podcast - read 活着 by 余华 - watched some episodes of Yanxi Palace - watched 你的孩子不是你的孩子 (highly recommended!) - watch a LOT of youtube videos I’m also still texting and calling my Chinese-speaking friends, but all in all I don’t use the language enough, most of it is passive consumption. I think I’ll try the Diary Challenge to force myself to write more.  Japanese Update #7: My motivation to study Japanese has been pretty much non-existent since coming back to Germany. I don’t see or hear the language anywhere here, at least in Taiwan I could eavesdrop on tourists! What I did: - started watching Midnight Diner: Toyko Stories - played through NieR: Automata Impressive, eh? I hope my motivation will come back once I move. I got a job in a city that has a lot of expats, maybe I’ll look for a tandem partner there. In the meantime, I’ll try the 1 Month Kanji Challenge. I’m gonna focus on Kanji that don’t exist in Chinese or are written very differently or have a different meaning in Chinese/Japanese. And that’s it! Everybody stay safe and healthy in these trying times!

[pai-seh]

Languages/Life Update

Life has been busy these past couple of weeks and so much is changing and I’m constantly tired, but I can see the end of the tunnel.

I didn’t study at all, I didn’t continue the news or diary challenges, but I will try to get back to it once everything settles down.

I have been using Mandarin a lot though, because all but one of my coworkers are Chinese. A lot of internal documents and systems are in Mandarin, and so are most of the meetings. I’m having a blast!

As for Japanese, I have been obsessed with Persona 5 lately. It’s super convenient for language learning because there is a log of everything that’s been said in a scene and you can replay the audio of a sentence over and over! Learned some handy, often used phrases that way. (also, the game is just so much fun and feels like a Tokyo vacation... damn I miss traveling.)

And that’s it. I’m still lurking around and reblogging, just don’t expect any content from me for a while. Stay safe, everyone!

[pai-seh]

japanese update #4

i wrote about my trip to Yilan last weekend. it’s short and took way too long to write, but i’m kind of proud that i’ve strung together some coherent phrases in japanese.

週末、友達と宜蘭県に行きました。金曜日の晩に台北から 羅東まで電車で行きました。電車の中で中国語の宿題をしました。 羅東駅でスクーターを借りました。羅東駅からホテルまで２０分くらいかかります。ホテルはビーチの前だったので、日の出が見れました。 土曜日に山を登りました。台湾の天気は蒸暑いですから、すごく汗をかきました。疲れました！山の中に滝がありました。とてもきれいでした！ 日曜日に太平山で散歩しました。楽しかったです！

[pai-seh]

japanese update #6

I’m back from Japan and as I had predicted, I didn’t speak much Japanese. Mostly because I was too scared/shy, and also because the only people I spoke to were cashiers and waiters and I didn’t want to waste their time. I did get some sentences in at a gay bar though, people were much more approachable there, haha. But I reached my limits very quickly, luckily the bartender spoke really good English and helped me translate a bit.

Me and my Japanese friend only communicate in Chinese, but at least I was able to understand much more than last time when she was talking to family/friends/neighbours. That made me happy!

But to be honest, since coming back my motivation for learning Japanese has dropped significantly. I was studying every day before my trip, but now that it’s over I don’t have a specific goal anymore. I don’t know when I will visit Japan again (I’m sure I will though, still so much to see!), and I don’t know any people I could use the language with.

Also I’m just in a pretty bad mood in general because I’m trying to figure out how to fit my life into a suitcase, deciding what to throw away, what to give away, and my suitcase is STILL too heavy... and this week I’ll have to say goodbye to a bunch of friends and I’m not ready... I’m not ready to leave in general.

So, my Japanese studies (and any other studies tbh) will be on hold until I’m back in Germany. I’m sure my motivation for learning will come back eventually.

[pai-seh]

Chinese/Japanese/Life Update

Sooo, the TOCFL test is on Saturday and I’ve been revising vocab and doing mock tests... and I really really suck at the listening part. I figured out why I had/have so much trouble with it: throughout my Chinese learning journey, I’ve consistently ignored 成語/四字格. I can use and recognize some of them, and if I see the characters I can also guess, but if I only hear them? 完蛋了！The listening exercises I did were full of 成語 though! So, I’ve spent a good portion of my study time last week to revise 成語 left and right and I hope I will get some to stick. This week I will revise 成語 and vocab and do more listening exercises. I can’t wait for that test to be over. I hate tests.

Aside from that, I have booked another flight to Japan and I will stay 10 days this time, woohoo! My friend will have to work, so I think I’ll do some exploring on my own. Last time I was pretty much glued to her side and let her do all the talking, so this time around I will force myself to at least try to speak some Japanese. I haven’t studied any Japanese since signing up for TOCFL, so once that’s over I will focus more on it.

Also, I have decided to leave Taiwan in September. I cried a lot the first week after making that decision, but now I’m more and more okay with it I think. I don’t want to get into my reasons for leaving, but I feel like it’s the right thing to do at the moment. I hope I will be able to come back and live in Taiwan again in the future, but for now I gotta go back.

I think I will post some pictures of my every day life in Taiwan, to kind of celebrate all those little things that feel mundane to me right now, but that I will miss so much once I’m back in Germany.

And that’s it for now! Now back to studying!

And to all my fellow Chinese learners out there: Study your 成語, folks. Study your 成語.

[pai-seh]

japanese update #5

I asked my friend to give me a topic to write about and she went “write about your thoughts the first time you met me!” and i’m like

you know, i’m more at a “how’s the weather”, “what’s your favourite animal” kind of level

i tried anyway and just got her corrections back, let me tell you, it’s A LOT

there was some grammar in there i haven’t learned yet, i hope once i look back at it in a couple of months or so it will all be clear to me, haha

[pai-seh]

Japanese Update #2

Since I posted my last update in Februrary, I thought I’d reflect a bit on the past months.

First things first: I’m still having lots of fun learning, no frustration has set in yet. Very good sign! I haven’t followed a strict schedule though. I revise vocab and sentences on LingoDeer every day on my way to and from work and it works surprisingly well. It’s maybe 10 to 20 minutes every day, but it actually pays off. This is the first time I’ve revised vocab this consistently and I’m surprised it’s working. Learning vocab has always been tedious to me and I would usually binge-learn a whole lot on a day, but this 10-20 minutes a day works way better for me.

LingoDeer works really well for me. I know there comes a point when you’d have to pay for it eventually (not sure which part though), but since I started as a complete beginner to Japanese, there’s still a lot I can get out of this app before I reach that point.

Aside from that, I went through chapters 1 to 7 of Genki 1. I wanted to do much more, but since there were some weeks where I just didn’t have the time to study, I forgot a lot and had to do some chapters twice.

Most importantly though, I went to Japan last month! It was a very spontaneous trip to see my friend, and sadly only for three days, but! I understood some things! I was like a little parrot next to her, repeating sentences or words I’d understood back to her. Also, she would mix up her languages sometimes, speaking Chinese to the waiter and then Japanese to me, which gave me even more motivation to improve my Japanese. Anyway, I was too terrified to actually speak to anyone (I’m too shy to speak when I don’t know a language well, it’s really annoying), so I hope next time I’ll try a bit more other than constant ありがとうございました. 

My next goals will be to finish Genki 1 and the LingoDeer course, but I haven’t set a clear time frame for that. I’ll try to do at least a chapter a week. Also, I definitely need to listen more to Japanese, I don’t have a good grip on intonation and pitch accent yet. I also need to revise some Katakana, I keep mixing some up.

So yeah, that’s it for now. I understand some basic stuff and I can talk about basic stuff, so that’s a start and way more than I was able to do a couple of months ago. I’ll keep going.

[pai-seh]

Japanese Update #1 & Study Goal

I need to write this down and post it to hold myself accountable. Since I’ve been super busy with work, Chinese class, and having a massive crush on my best friend here, I haven’t studied as much Japanese as I’d originally hoped. I haven’t opened any of my two (2) Japanese books (namely Genki and a grammar book written in Chinese) in quite a while, but I’ve watched some youtube videos and progressed a bit on LingoDeer, but... that’s about it. Picked up a word here and there from my friend, and I’m pretty sure they only stuck because they’re all derived from English (like マザコン , thanks for that one!).

Talking about マザコン , I still can’t read katakana for shit, I had to google that one. And talking about LingoDeer, I switched the whole thing to hiragana only, because I was relying way too much on kanji.

So I’ll set some study goals for January, February, and March:

learn katakana

practise some LingoDeer every day, even if it’s just 10 minutes (on my way to and/or back from work for example!)

rewatch Miss Sherlock, Erased, or start another show in Japanese

watch at least two of Misa’s videos a week (i love her videos, she explains everything so well!)

whenever there are new grammar points, see what Genki and the grammar book have to say about them

eat sashimi to boost morale

Looks doable to me. I’ll hopefully post a successful update in March!