Howdy! I've been observing the langblr community from afar, and I've finally decided to join in on the fun :D
You can call me Willow! I use all pronouns, and I learn languages mainly as a hobby :0 I made this side blog to document my progress and I'd love to find study buddies, language exchange partners, or just make new friends in general!
Fluent:
🇬🇧 English - English is the language I'd say I'm most comfortable with, though I do have an accent irl, oh well...
🇷🇺 Russian - Russian is actually my first language, and even though I technically use it everyday. It's a bit rusty since I live in the US and consume content mainly in English.
Learning:
🇫🇷 French - (A2 ) I've been learning French for almost a year now though you couldn't tell that by my level 🥲 I'm hoping to get it to at least conversational, we'll see how it goes
☆ 🇯🇵 Japanese - (A1) Japanese is my most recent language, so I'm a complete beginner. I'm determined to reach fluency, though it will probably take a while.
🇺🇦 Ukrainian - (A1) I don't have a consistent schedule and I'm not studying it formally, but half of my family speaks it so I've been slowly studying (mainly via immersion).
Wishlist:
☆ 🇫🇮 Finnish - I really want to learn Finnish - it's a highly synthetic language (as far as I know) and I love how it sounds. I've discovered that learning 3 languages at the same time is spreading myself too thin, but hopefully I can start once I get my Japanese to a higher level.
🇳🇴 Norwegian - I'm interested in the culture of Nordic countries, and I've always though Norwegian was an interesting language :)
🇩🇪 German, 🇨🇳 Mandarin - Maybe in the far away future...
Spent 4 and a halfish hours creating an anki deck for @jpn-langblr ‘s あつ森 (Animal crossing) posts. It’s gonna help me play so much better in Japanese. So thank you so much for those posts!!
I’m also trying to figure out a way to mass send them to jpdb.io. I’m loving that website. If I can learn more, the more I can use that site to get media recommendations I’ll be able to understand well. I’m so excited.
I also decorated my anki and did more tweaking to my desktop today. Starting to look nicer all the time.
I was also watching Japanese AC videos yesterday. This girl is so sweet and makes such pretty islands. You should check her out! Her name is せなくまチャンネル
Free PDF Workbooks for Japanese, Spanish, Korean, etc. (30+ languages)
If you’re looking to practice a bit and remember your target language better… here are tons of free worksheets/workbooks for 34 languages (Japanese, Spanish, Korean, French, German, Italian, etc, etc.)
It’s the same type of “fill in the blank” workbook across all of their languages but the magic in actually rewriting things over and over is that the words end up sticking. Plus, there are English sections where you’ll have to force yourself to remember and write the word/phrase in the target language - which is even better for your memory (called active recall - forcing yourself to remember). I’m personally a big fan of this approach and I’d do similar to pass vocab quizzes in my HS & uni language classes.
日本語を勉強し始めてから約2ヶ月後にめっっっちゃいいアドバイスを聞いた。Matt vs Japanは、日本のyoutubeをみるためだけのアカウントを作ることを勧めていた。その時までは、もう持ってたyoutubeアカウントで日本語の動画を探してたけど、あまり出てこなくて、「日本語の動画はないかな？」と思い始めちゃった。でもalgorithmのせいだよ！algorithmは自分についてすごく詳しい。自分が英語をできるのを知ってるし、自分の好きなチャンネルと好きそうなチャンネルは全部英語だと知ってるから日本語のが出てこない。新しいアカウントを作ったら、新しい世界が開くよ。
About 2 months into studying japanese, I heard some really good advice. Matt vs Japan recommended that people create a new youtube account just for watching videos in your target language. Up until then I had been looking for japanese videos on my existing account, but I couldn't find many and I began to wonder if there just weren't many japanese videos on youtube. But it was because of the algorithm! The algorithm knows everything about you. It knows you can speak english, and it knows all of the content you like is in english too. Once you make a new account, a whole you world opens up.
First, an important point. In your settings, change your location to Japan and your language to Japanese. If you do this you won't be shown any english videos.
Recommended channels
🧑🏫 Study and language
ゆる言語学ラジオ：This channel is the best for anyone interested in linguistics. They use difficult terms and concepts, but it's worth it. So good.
Meshclass 日本語：Japanese lessons for beginners, taught in Japanese. This channel is the best for beginners.
Atsueigo：A channel that discusses culture, grammar, vocab, and language acquisition
🎮 Games
タタタ：Comfy animal crossing tutorials and gameplay
SKJ Village：A comedy channel where they play stuff like mario maker 2, smash bros, and minecraft. They're always coming up with great video ideas.
Shogun/しょーぐん：A smash bros pro player who has recently started making more talk content.
キヨ。：A guy who makes longform let's plays. He's a bit annoying but actually quite helpful for study. He talks clearly and talks a lot.
🍱 Food
ハーリーのグルメ Hurley's gourmet：A person who lives food, based in Tokyo. He speaks kinda slowly so he's good for beginners!
あべちゃんのお酒チャンネル：These guys are a bit gross but they show off some really nice izakayas. They don't use much vocab so its easy to understand.
ミツボシ：A Kyoto foodie group.
こじまぽん助：A channel that teaches some really good recipes.
💬 Chatting and variety
Kevin's English Room：This is a channel meant for Japanese people learning English, but it's actually really good for Japanese learners too.
平成フラミンゴ：A comedy channel with a wide scope that does tons of stuff like mukbangs, pranks, travel vlogs, and chatting.
QuizKnock：An interesting/funny quiz channel. The quiz themes they come up with are really interesting.
Note: my native Japanese speaker girlfriend has proofread the above Japanese text so it should all be correct
To all my Japanese learners- this Netflix show is SO good. One episode had me hooked. I think significantly more effective to watch live action in your target language over watching animated content, because you can see the way people actually talk. So I’m very thankful that I found this show :)
So, I was looking for some websites that could offer us some free resources to improve listening skills and I came across with these sites.
Aozora Roudoku
The best website out there. You can search audiobooks by the author’s name or by the work’s name. There are tons of authors, Japanese and non-Japanese. From Ryuunosuke Akutagawa to Oscar Wilde. You can find the audio transcript in Aozora Bunko by writing the title of the work in the search bar.
LibriBox
Audiobooks from the free domain read by volunteers. There are collections of stories as well as solo works like novels. However, all of them are from Japanese authors.
Youtube
You can also find audio books or picture books that are read aloud on Youtube. Type 朗読 (to read aloud) in the Youtube search bar and you will encounter a wide variety of options. Listening to this videos helps my listening comprehension a lot and I learn more vocabulary as well. Even if you are at a beginner level I totally recommend listening to audios (picture books, audiobooks, folktales, short stories, podcasts etc) in order to get familiar with the Japanese pitch accent.
Ryokan-sama: This is an example of an audiobook in Japanese with Japanese captions. Captions are important to me so I can pint point new vocabulary or grammar.
Kurai Tokoro Kara Yattekuru: This is an example of a picture book 絵本 read aloud 読み聞かせ.
Sannen Netaro: This one is a folk tale narrated out loud.
This is very uncomfortable to share but at this point, I have to.
I vaguely mentioned it to explain why I had changed my @ again and only explained it fully to a few private students but I've had a stalker for a while and it's turned into some type of erotomania where the guy is convinced I'm madly in love with him, has been sitting in his car in front of my building, spying on me on social media, sending me flowers, getting in touch with former coworkers, compiling his thoughts in a diary that he sends me once in a while (where he built a life where we have three sons that already have names and I'm a housemaker) and after realising that I'm seeing someone has now threatened to hurt him and slashed the tires of his car that was parked at his house 20mn away last night.
The popo is not helping because he hasn't done anything illegal yet and we can't prove he's the one who damaged the car therefore they won't intervene until he actually does something major. Clown emoji.
Now I need to move before he breaks in and/or I'm fully sleep-deprived. In the past two months, I, unfortunately, lost a portion of my income after several students had to take breaks or stop lessons at the same time and being a freelancer I'm not currently in a position where my applications would be taken seriously.
So here's my offer: not only I'm of course available for long-term tutoring, but if this is not something you can do at the moment I would be happy to give you intensive tutoring during your holiday break. For example, depending on your situation, 1h a day for five days would be either 100 or 175 euros. Can be more or fewer hours, more or fewer days, just one weekend, you're in charge of the details.
All info + student reviews are here. If you wanted to help differently, my Paypal is isthisnox at pm dot me (sending to a friend to avoid taxes).
in living. - She does fashion videos, hauls or simply videos about her everyday life. Also has a bunch of different channels for specific things like eg games.
Sorekara Travel - Ryo does travel videos in Japan with a very...ambient feeling? There is not much overlay with music. I don't know what I am saying.
5歳からの同級生とルームシェア - Kaito and Kouki basically showcase their everyday life as roommates and often make cooking videos. It's a good channel if one wants to here more casual conversation.
Se-ya - Vlogs. Interior. The music selection is just top tier too with the jazzy&retro vibe he has going on.
あっちゃん - Your typical vlogs with a chill vibe. I don't have much more to say what kind of videos he makes.
Cooking
Kiwami Meshi - Do you know 'The Way of the Househusband'? Yeah, that's basically this channel. Also made a few recipes already, really good!!
ご飯が美味しいch - Because of the nature of the videos it is rather a reading than listening practice but they are incredibly soothing.
Gaming and Art
Peco - A kind of god when it comes to Zelda Breath of the Wild but is also playing other (Nintendo) games these days. Does mostly livestreams you can rewatch at any time.
花江夏樹 （はなえ なつき）- Voice actor by day, youtuber at night. Just plays a variety of games, often with friends, and it's very entertaining.
Archipel - Documentaries about Japanese creators and artists.
北原ユシキ/画景-kakkei- - Just an illustrator I really like who often streams.
Watecolor with Shibasaki - Just a Japanese grandpa, or Japanese Bob Ross, teaching you how to paint.
Salut!!! I am here to give you some resources that helped me learn french! <3 I will warn you that I learn very informally. I hate taking notes or like seriously studying.
Langauge Transfer- a free podcast lesson that is FANTASTIC for getting a good base in the language and for making connections from english to french. You can listen on youtube or soundcloud
netflix- once you can at least read a bit in french, i would highly recommend the show Lupin on netflix. Watching with french subtitles and then graduating to sans sous-titres will really help! It is a wonderful show and I think that Omar Sy´s accent is really easy to understand
TV5Monde- they have a really good listening comprehension test and then give you resources to improve. You might watch a video about an art exhibit and then answer some questions about it.
Youtube- I can not stress this enough. Not only can you find teachers, but you can also find native french content to practice. BUT the most useful is the comments. That's where you can learn a ton of slang and vocab
I have never been a huge soccer fan er I guess le fút lol. But i am now. Paris-Saint-Germain has a great channel with interviews and games with the players.
CRAZY SALLY
cam summers
Piece of French (teacher)
French Avec Nelly (teacher)
InnerFrench (teacher) and he has a great podcast too!!
Easy French (interviews for people learning french)
lingoni french and french with Alexa (these two were never my cup of tea but are great quality)
Duolingo- some people really do be hating on it, but it has gotten a lot better. I wouldn't recommend it as a only/primary source of learning, but it is a great supplement to get some more vocab in. Plus if you join in on the leaderboards and challenges, it is fun
I do make flashcards as a way to review vocab and I go over them when I get the chance. Quizlet made a lot of their stuff premium :( so i use Brainscape which is pretty great
The best way to get better is to talk!!!! Even talking to yourself for a few minutes a day will do wonders
i haven't posted anything on here in a while and i think i'm gonna make this more of a personal blog documenting my progress that i can go back to rather than worry about having a perfect blog. still gonna post resources tho~
