Puff pastry pizza

sometimes it is a bit frustrating how purist some language learning forums can be about their learning method being best and unquestionable, unable to find resources from more. like, i get liking a study method that works for you, we all do! i do not get shooting down resources that can and already helped someone, just because they didn’t help you personally (or you don’t like using them particularly), so it makes it hard for another person to find those resources and discourages using them in the first place.

the post (featuring some interesting links) by Strong-Philosophy-46 : https://www.reddit.com/r/Refold/comments/n09cxk/i_think_shadowing_should_be_used_in_the_early/

from all what I've read, shadowing seems to improve phonemic awareness (the ability to hear phonemes), listening comprehension and even pitch accent in Japanese. Which all seem to be the whole point of doing an only input/no output period in the beginning.

I was on the Refold reddit again (used to be massiveimmersionapproach). And someone mentioned that shadowing may have benefits earlier on in language study - compared to Refold, which does do shadowing but not until you are basically passively able to comprehend most things to all overall things in a language (so 1-2 years into study at least). Refold insists it is efficient (I would argue while it certainly is, it amounts to srs flashcards to speed up memorization and lots of comprehensible input and ambiguous input which generally will help learners at any stage improve comprehension skills). And that its goal in mind is to learn effectively.

I sort of think, to a degree, some people who do Refold appreciate the fact there’s no encouraged output early on - either they don’t like talking, practicing with people, don’t feel comfortable writing grammar until they have a much more solid foundation compared to when textbooks make you from day 1 (that last reason’s a big reason I tend to put off output until I know more grammar). Now its great to do what you prefer! Because it will get you to KEEP studying, and that’s always more effective and efficient than what makes you give up/avoid the language. So in that sense yes avoiding output until later, if you desire, is probably the more effective choice to make. 

But at the same time? Refold encourages NOT doing output sooner, even if you feel the urge and even if some Refold studiers outputted sooner, the general consensus is ‘you will mess up accent, build bad habits, sacrifice your eventual output quality’ so people tend to discourage it. By earlier I mean like 5 months, in 10 months in - not day 1 of study. So if research happened to find, that shadowing at those earlier stages of 5 months etc actually Improves long term output skills? Then that’s great! It shows Refold’s tendency to discourage output until excellent passive comprehension fluency is achieved is unnecessary, and if you desire to output sooner (and it will motivate you, since what’s most effective is always what you’ll DO versus quit), then it would be great to know shadowing is something you can do sooner! And that it may even help your goals faster!

As I mentioned, Refold still eventually encourages shadowing after you’ve reached a high level of comprehension fluency - and at that point, you still have to do all the same shadowing techniques and work (you don’t get to skip steps, though the sounds might be more familiar). So ultimately Refold does use shadowing and already knows its helpful. I do wonder though if some people feel they need to justify their desire to not output earlier as ‘its better for my skills to Wait.” When like... in some ways that sounds to me just like perhaps a textbook/classroom learner who refuses to try to read target language novels for 2 years because they haven’t learned “the skills yet” and might misinterpret the grammar of what they read or reinforce fuzzy understanding - even though no matter how long its put off, immersion in target language content will eventually have to happen and be practiced. 

Like, the unwillingness to do shadowing earlier even if it proves to be more effective - especially if the arguement is “oh well despite proof i think it will be less effective” just rings to me like people trying to avoid what they dislike. And i think its fine to avoid what one dislikes, because for an individual it IS going to be more effective always than quitting. I just also think that Reason is good enough on its Own - there is no reason to belittle other learning approaches and strategies as less effective (especially if its proven they are more effective, but even just if someone finds them useful they’re effective to the person who will do them), when your reason of ‘i prefer not to yet’ is really good enough. Its good enough.

Just to emphasize, I’ve seen the exact opposite - traditional learners claiming ‘refold’ is ineffective and should be avoided and it ‘slows’ progress and is inefficient and a waste of time. I really do think those kinds of discouragements just keep learners who might learn or simply prefer to study DIFFERENT from you from finding wonderful ideas/materials/resources that may suit them much better, simply because a person would rather shoot down offering more resources rather than just say “well that’s useful to someone, but for me I hated doing it so I do it this way since it works better for me/I can stay motivated.” 

When I started studying chinese, I looked up lots of “how to read chinese” articles and forum posts. Since I wanted to read asap. I found some good advice. I also found a lot of angry posts. There were some people on chinese learner forums who insisted one must learn up to HSK 6 vocabulary (some were huge proponents of using anki, some hated anki - i relate to the can’t do flashcards crowd lol). And then even after that, start with graded readers, learn 3000+ hanzi before being able to tackle target language novels made for natives with a dictionary. Its pretty clear from what I describe, they probably had a personal preference for little ambiguity when engaging with chinese (too much incomprehensible input would cause them to want to quit/burn out and that’s perfectly understandable since most people generally don’t like tolerating under 95-98% comprehension). 

They were very opposite of the Refold method’s idea of immersing in content from day 1, so huge amount of ambiguity for many months. Well these people on this forum really insisted reading in chinese even with a dictionary was an insurmountable task without years of study. I obviously ended up not following their preference. But they didn’t talk about it like “oh I dislike ambiguity so I prefer to prepare this much to make the material tolerable to immerse with” they instead talked about it like “doing it any other way is hopeless and will result in needing to do this anyway.”

I ended up following the advice of people who wanted to learn like I like learning - I found examples of people who did it more like I would, knew they succeeded so I’d have some success, and copied them. There really are all kinds of methods for different people and needs/wants. I read an article of a guy who read some radical basics (me too), learned 2000 common words in memrise with a linked deck (I did it too it took 2 months, but I spread it out over 4 months of a month on then a break then another month on). Then they said they just started reading, with a dictionary, learning more words from there. I did that too - it worked for me too. I also knew from prior japanese study I needed hanzi learning help so i read a reference for maybe 500 hanzi during those months. I knew from french prior study I did better reading a grammar summary ahead of reading, so I did that too (before the common words, it took 2 weeks). I did NOT end up having to wait for years, to learn up to HSK 6, to start reading with a dictionary (my initial goal). It took about 8-10 months for the grammar to click enough that vocab lookup became the only issue, and one month burst studying about 500 more hanzi in a Hanzi Mnemonic Anki deck to quickly learn some hanzi I was running into in reading and just wanted to remember easier. So about a year in, I could move to just reading for enjoyment and looking up words with a dictionary without new hanzi frustrating me (learning them the same as words now just looking them up) and without grammar confusing me. So that base goal, that some people’s experiences learning up to HSK 6 I read - they could not even tackle some graded readers by HSK 6. 

I think part of what held back their progress there was just... not wanting to immerse and insisting it would be ‘too hard’ to try sooner. While its fine if it kept them studying, for people like me who need to engage right away? It could’ve been discouraging and caused some people to feel less motivated if they happened to be setting up such expectations. I still don’t know a lot of HSK 6 words, and about 2/3 maybe of HSK 5 words? After HSK 4 the common 2000 words I studied didn’t match up as much to HSK, and also I started picking up words mainly in my reading and shows so now what words I know is much more related to the genres I engage with.  I’ve read some stats that The Little Prince has a low unique word count but about 50% of the words aren’t in HSK - so if you learned only from HSK without outside sources, its still not necessarily 98% comprehensible. Whatever smattering I learned from must have shared more words than 50% (though not 98% either I don’t think - not quite that easy). 

My point is just like... yeah I am aware the lack of listening i did in french held me back, the lack of shadowing/producing in chinese is now my weaker area. I know i avoid them more because i’m less interested and mainly just would not be as motivated to write a journal/talk regularly right now as i am in other things. But i also think if people learn differently? Things may work better for them, we all have different preferences. Anything useful, that might get someone To study, I think is worthwhile to share. 

How to Choose Japanese Manga/Books for Studying

In an ask recently, a user asked me what reading materials I recommend to study with. 

I’ve covered the standard textbooks here, and today I’ll talk about how you can determine whether an authentic material is suitable for your studies. All of this advice is based upon my studies in SLA (Second Language Acquisition) and TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages), as well as my personal experience learning Japanese. 

What’s an Authentic Material?

Authentic materials are print, video, and audio that are not classroom materials, but are things made for Japanese (or any other target language) speakers. A mock advertisement in your textbook is not an authentic material because it is not made for a Japanese person, but an actual Help Wanted ad in a Japanese newspaper is an authentic material.

Authentic materials can be just about anything audio or visual. Manga, light novels, newspapers, magazines, jpop songs, anime, news broadcast, etc. 

Today I’m just going to focus on visual authentic materials, but if there’s interest I could make a future post about audio materials too. 

1. Decide Your Method of Reading: Intensive or Extensive

When reading to study a foreign language, there are two different ways to go about it, intensive reading or extensive reading.

Intensive Reading 

Reading and looking up every single word you do not know, even words that aren’t essential to understanding the main points of the story. 

Pros: you learn a lot more vocab

Cons: it takes considerably longer to make progress

In order to do this method effectively (and by effectively I mean “resist chucking your book out the window in a fit of rage”), you must comprehend ~70%* of the content.

Extensive Reading 

Basically what you do when you read in your native language. You read each page, and even if you come across a word you don’t know, you keep going. You only look up words that keep coming up, or that hinder your overall comprehension of what’s going on. 

Pros: you cover more ground and get a bigger sense of accomplishment

Cons: you can miss out on smaller details

In order to do this method effectively, you must comprehend ~90% of the content.

Neither reading method is better than the other. Choose which style suits your personality best. Personally, I’m one of those people that has to know every last morsel about everything, so I only do intensive reading. 

2. Determine How Difficult a Material Is

Up above I said you had to be able to comprehend either 70 or 90 percent of the content depending on the method you want to go with.

In extensive reading, you need to be able to understand almost all the words because you can’t stop to look up a ton of stuff. If you have to look up 15 words on a page because you can’t understand what’s going on, you’re not doing extensive reading--you’re doing intensive reading. 

Now, as for the 70% I put on the intensive reading, there’s a bit of give with that, depending on how patient you are haha. If you’re okay with a crawling pace, the comprehension could be 10% if you want. But if you’re like me and you’re a bit hasty, you’re going to want to be able to comprehend around 70-80% of the vocab. 

So how do you figure out how difficult the content is? Pick a random page and the first 100 words on it, and count the words you didn’t know. Subtract the words you didn’t know from 100, and the answer will tell you roughly how much you can comprehend of the text. Easy, right? 

3. What Makes a Bad Material

I’m betting that anime/manga is what got most of us interested in learning Japanese, and there’s probably that one really nostalgic manga you’re dying to read in its original Japanese format.

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but just because you love a series doesn’t make it a good learning material. 

Things to Avoid in a Material

Lots of technical, scientific, or military jargon

I know that this wipes out a large swath of series, but the point of reading this is to learn Japanese, and there’s a good chance that most of the vocab you would learn would not be usable in conversation. Why waste the time learning 白刃取り (catching a blade between two palms) when you could be learning something more practical? 

Period works (Edo Era and further back)

Many (but not all) period pieces contain a bunch of obsolete words, and the last thing you want to be is one of those gaijin that uses “gozaru” unironically. I tried using the expression 村八分 (ostracism) and got laughed at by my coworkers just last month because that just makes people think of villages in the Edo period.

Long Chapters

Particularly if you’re doing the Intensive Reading method, it’s important to give yourself a sense of accomplishment. It took me an hour to read one page of a book for one of my classes, and 30 hours to read ONE chapter. It was the most frustrating and endless experience I’ve had to date. Pick manga (because chapters are short) or short stories. (I really recommend Hoshi Shinichi’s “short-short” stories.)

Don’t be like poor Kagome

4. What Makes a Good Material

I have saved the most important condition for your material until last. 

Are you ready?

Here it is:

Make sure it’s something you like!

I know that this is so basic I shouldn’t even have to say it. But listen, for one of my Japanese courses in uni, I had a semester to read one of Haruki Murakami’s novellas. It was the most difficult and frustrating semester I had because not only was it super hard for me vocab-wise, it was boring as hell. I didn’t enjoy the story, and the ending was so

alskfjksldfjsd

It’s been 6 years and I’m still triggered. It was awful, and it made me feel like all of this toil, all of this suffering, had been for nothing. I thought that I hated reading in Japanese. But actually, when I pushed myself to try reading a manga I liked, I learned that I didn’t hate reading Japanese--

--I just hated reading Murakami.

If you find a material that is the right difficulty level and is appropriate for your purposes but you don’t find it interesting, it’s likely that you’ll get bored of it and quit halfway through. But if you like a material enough, even if it is too difficult for your current level, your love for it can give you the extra boost of motivation you need to push through it. 

My favorite manga series of all time is Rurouni Kenshin. It was the first anime I ever watched, and it kinda started me down the road I’m on. So I decided to read the manga, and oh man is it a chore. I’ve read 14 volumes and have looked up 1,577 words as of today. It has a bunch of obsolete Japanese, it has so many sword words holy bejeezus (this is where I learned 白刃取り, btw), and it can take me hours to get through a chapter sometimes. 

But I love that series with everything I am, so I don’t care how long it takes. 

Really, what matters more than anything is that it’s something you are really invested and interested in.

5. How Soon Can I Start Reading Authentic Materials?

Did you know that the average native Japanese person cannot read a newspaper until they are a freshman in high school? That is how hard Japanese is. For the native speakers.

I hate to be a Debbie Downer here, but I would recommend you wait to use most authentic materials until you are N3 or N2. I finally began feeling comfortable reading stuff in Japanese around when I passed the N2. I understand that Chi’s Sweet Home is popular for beginners, so that isn’t to say that there are no authentic materials to be found for new learners, but they are very hard to find. 

But hey, if you are determined enough, there is nothing that can stop you from reading what you love, and nothing worth having is easily won. Ganbatte!

back-to-school tools

‘tis the season again, so here are some handy websites and browser extensions i’ve discovered over the past few years that’ll hopefully make this year a bit easier for you. i’m taking high-school-level classes, but a lot of these should help with college/uni work, too!

feel free to reblog and add your own recommendations :)

the only ones you have to install and/or sign up for have an asterisk, but note that they’re all free either way.

L A N G U A G E   A R T S

planet ebook

this is my go-to for digital (and legal!) classic literature. i download the pdf files and upload them to places like one note to annotate, but epub and mobi versions are also available if you prefer those. no need to break your back over hauling textbooks and your required readings!

audible stories

this doesn’t have the widest selection of audio books, but it definitely has its uses! there are a lot of classics on there, which could come in handy for a literature or english class.

easybib

this is the best citation tool ever. i love that i can choose which style i want to use and what kind of media i’m researching with (books, journals, websites, etc.). if i need to, i can go in and edit any (citation) category i want, but that isn’t usually necessary because it can find stats that even i can’t while looking at the source. enter some info, copy ‘n paste the works cited list to your paper, and you’re done!

i recommend the web version and not the google docs add-on because the add-on doesn’t let you customize your citations

gradeproof* or grammarly*

these are both grammar/spelling checkers that provide plenty of stats, which are most useful for speeches. you can use these to see your character count, word count, number of sentences, syllables per word, words per sentence, readability, grade level, reading time, speaking time, etc.

wordcounter

this is a great alternative if you can’t/don’t want to install gradeproof or grammarly.

powerthesaurus

this is my go-to thesaurus... it has a ton of features if you go on the website (it’s not just for synonyms, though those are seemingly endless!). plus, if i don’t want to open a new tab, i can use the extension in my toolbar to see a brief list!

just a word of caution: look up any words you don’t know (because if you go far enough down the list, they’re not completely relevant anymore).

onelook

i use this reverse dictionary to find the word that’s on the tip of my tongue but i just can’t name (though it has a lot more features than that!).

cueprompter

this is the perfect teleprompter for any speeches you need to record (maybe for an online graduation? a virtual debate?).

xodo*

this is a great digital annotation tool (right in your browser) for those of you who don’t have an app like goodnotes on your ipad. you can upload files from your google drive, your device, or dropbox and draw on them, type notes, add comments, highlight, choose different underline patterns, add shapes/arrows, etc. all while customizing opacity, thickness, and colors. you’re also able to zoom in/out, change page width, rotate the page, change your layout (pdf, book, magazine), and choose a transition style.

A R T

canva*

i love this site to death---if you haven’t heard of it yet, what are you doing?? i can design everything from a resume to a powerpoint to a school dance flyer on this thing! there are beautiful templates to choose from, but if that’s not your thing (it isn’t mine either), then there are millions of photos, doodles, graphics, fonts, borders, backgrounds, etc. to choose from. plus, you can even upload your own content. (i designed the header for this post on there!)

F O R E I G N   L A N G U A G E S

typeit

i hate having to remember all the keyboard shortcuts for special characters, so i just copy and paste from this international keyboard. choose a language, and you’re good to go. :)

audible stories

did i put this in two different categories? yes. audible stories has free audio books in english, spanish, french, german, portuguese, italian, dutch, and japanese! i recommend finding a children’s audiobook on there in your target language and pulling up an ebook online so you can improve your listening and comprehension skills. there’s no need to download any content, and it still saves your spot (even once you close the tab), which is a lifesaver!

duolingo*

i think we all know by now that this site is good for practicing your sentence-writing skills and gaining a little extra vocab. keep in mind that this only helps if you take notes on your mistakes and type answers out yourself as opposed to mindlessly clicking through multiple choice questions! duolingo stories are also great for working on your listening comprehension skills and some immersion.

linguno*

i use this site for conjugations because that’s its main asset, but there are other things you can look into if you like. i love that i can choose a section and a level (ex: a1 level one, a1 level two, a1 level three, etc.) or add my own list of words. the rest is super customizable too! you can also choose which tenses you want to work on and what set of pronouns you want to focus on (for example, european spanish uses “vosotros” while latin american spanish does not).

S C I E N C E

molview

build your own molecules or search ones that already exist to explore what they’re used for, their structure, their composition, 2-d/3-d models, formulas, molecular weight, etc.

ptable

this dynamic periodic table has a million features for each element, which makes it perfect for researching and figuring out why the table is laid out the way it is.

phet

this is basically a virtual stem lab---atom-builders, circuit-builders, wave simulations, and interactive tools galore! it covers physics, chemistry, biology, math, and html5, though i’ve only used first three categories, so i can’t exactly recommend the others.

M A T H

geogebra or desmos

these babies are graphing tools perfect for checking functions and all that jazz (they’re basically the exact same except geogebra has a couple more bells and whistles).

symbolab

use this to check your answers and review the steps if you’re stuck! when it gets into some nitty-gritty stuff, you have to have the paid plan to see some of the steps, but i think it’s helpful enough that you can stick with the free version. it covers pre-alg, alg, pre-calc, calc, functions, matrices & vectors, geometry, trig, stats, physics, chem, finance, conversions, etc. (i use this to avoid silly mistakes and the ixl rage that follows haha).

mathway*

this is very similar to symbolab except that it doesn’t show any steps at all unless you pay for a plan. you can use this for basic math, pre-alg, alg, trig, pre-calc, calc, stats, finite math, etc. as a cross-checker in case symbolab is being funky.

JLPT N2 Resources

Hello! I am a 4th year university student studying Japanese and Spanish, and I wanted to introduce some of the resources that I've been using to study for the JLPT N2 that I was planning to take in December (until it got cancelled...) I've been studying Japanese for 3 years, and I passed the JLPT N3 in July 2019. I was supposed to go to Japan to study abroad in March this year, but it was cancelled due to Corona, so I've been self-studying N2 material so that I can keep up with my classes when I go back to university. I'm also sorry this post is so long without a read more section, because my Tumblr currently is not working properly and I'm posting on mobile.

The JLPT is made up of 5 sections that are split up over 3 tests: the first is normally Vocabulary (including Kanji) and Reading, followed by Grammar, and then finally a Listening section.

Vocabulary & Kanji:

For studying vocabulary and kanji, I would recommend the 総まとめ (Sou Matome) series of books. They give you clear lists of the vocabulary and kanji that you need grouped by theme, split into manageable chapters that are designed so that you can do a few pages a day for 8 weeks. At the end of each day there is a small test, and then on day 7 there is a more comprehensive test of all the vocab/kanji in that chapter that help test your memory.

In terms of actually remembering this vocab/kanji, I would suggest using the memory card app Anki. I used to always hear people recommending Anki and I didn't understand why, because I didn't get how the software worked, and I didn't want to be confined to just learning 20 words a day, but now that I've been using it for around 6 months now, I understand how beneficial it is. You first learn your 20 new words, and then the next day you review them, and then you continue reviewing cards and build up your memory, and the number of reviews you do per day increases (mine is normally around 100) but it only really takes around 10-15 minutes to do, so I would definitely recommend.

In order to practice the vocab and kanji that you have learned, I would suggest the ドリル＆ドリル文字語彙 (Drill & Drill Moji Goi) book, which is literally just a textbook of example questions that will appear on the actual exam, and I found very useful for consolidating my knowledge and finding other vocab that wasn't in Sou Matome.

Reading:

For reading, I definitely recommend the 新完全マスター読解 (Shin Kanzen Master Dokkai) book. Personally I don't like the way the Sou Matome book is set up in regards to the reading portion, so I prefer how Shin Kanzen Master just gives you lots of practice questions, with little explanations of tips to help you answer at the beginning of each chapter.

I'd also recommend reading whatever you can get your hands on. Bookwalker is a great website for getting Japanese novels online, as I read the book for Kiki's Delivery Service on it and am currently reading the Your Name novel there too. At first it's really difficult to read, and you find yourself looking up lots of words, but I PROMISE it gets easier! On the first few pages of Your Name I was looking up like 30 words a page, but now I can go through at least 3 or 4 before having to look one up. Reading the news is also a good way to practice, such as TBS News, which has short articles that are fairly accessible.

Grammar:

I originally used the 新完全マスター文法 (Shin Kanzen Master Bunpou) book, and copied each of the grammar points along with some example sentences into a notebook, however while I appreciate the thoroughness of the book and the practice questions, I sometimes found that I didn't understand some of the explanations as to how certain grammar points were different, or their uses, and so while I think the book is a good base, I would actually recommend you use free YouTube and website resources.

My first recommendation is the channel 日本語の森 (Nihongo no Mori), who have a whole playlist of videos dedicated to N2 Grammar. From the list that the teacher in the video goes through, I would often then find the grammar point on 日本語NET and look through the explanation and example sentences they have to get a better idea of the grammar's usage.

But again just knowing the grammar point isn't the same as being able to answer questions on them, so I went through the Drill & Drill Grammar book which has hundreds of practice questions so that you can get familiar with how to answer everything and the different situations where different grammar points need to be used.

Listening:

Unfortunately I don't really have any advice for listening, as I haven't done any formal listening practice. I am a big fan of anime, and I've recently switched from watching anime with subs to without, so I can focus on trying to understand what is being said myself. Obviously anime is not necessarily an accurate representation of everyday Japanese or of what will be on the exam, and so if I knew I was actually taking the test, I'd definitely probably use either Sou Matome or Shin Kanzen Master books to practice. Also, during quarantine the voice actor Hanae Natsuki posted videos every day of him and friends playing video games, which I always watch, and I can understand most of what is said, so that counts as extra listening!

And that's all I have to say for now, sorry this was so long. If anyone has any questions on anything to do with the exam or resources, or has any suggestions of resources they've used, feel free to add them or message me!

How did/do I learn vocabulary?

How did/do I learn vocabulary?

This is a question I’m asked quite often and I usually have a different answer each time. The reason is because I have no set way I learn vocabulary. This post will focus entirely on my experience and journey with vocabulary. Grammar will be a topic for another day. ;)

In my opinion, there is no set way to learn vocabulary. I can’t stare at lists and lists of words and suddenly they’re memorized, but I have! I can’t use flash cards because they take too much time, but I have! Kind of see where I’m going with this? I’m the perfect example of an informal or unstructured learner/studier. 

I am a lazy learner. THE LAZIEST. I’m all for fast and easy ways to learn without so much as lifting a finger. Insane, right? Totally. Extremely insane for a beginner like I was. Butttttt, I did it though. Was it smart? Probably not. Did it work? Well… kinda?

I also want to point out that I’ve never studied Japanese in a classroom setting nor have I had tutors to teach me. 

Okay, what I did:

I started learning Japanese on June 11, 2018. I’m going to list the resources I’ve done roughly up to this point in time that this is posted. 

Please don’t take my views on the apps and resources listed as final say. Everyone learns differently and I suggest you try all of these resources out! Things that don’t work for me, may work for you and vice versa.

DuoLingo. It was the only app I really knew of that was credible. I drilled the crap out of that app! That’s how I got my foundations in kana, my first words, and first kanji! 

DuoLingo is good in some ways, but bad in others. It’s perfect for repetition and getting you to think about those words over and over. But that’s also why it’s bad. Each step makes you go through like, what?, four or five tiers or whatever they’re called? By the time you reach that fourth of fifth tier, it’s just annoying to do that pattern over and over again before you can move on. This is just my opinion though, some people thrive off of that. Don’t knock it till you try it, ‘kay? I’ve heard the app has changed some since summer of 2018, so I’ll have to check it out again. 

LingoDeer. Gosh, I love LingoDeer. I really need to use it more. It is the best app ever to introduce you to grammar when you have no idea where to start. 

Workbooks. I got my first workbooks (not textbooks) at the end of June 2018 (I had been learning for roughly 3 weeks by that time). It was Learning Japanese Hiragana and Katakana and Learning Japanese Kanji Volumes 1 and 2, all published by Tuttle. As I worked through the kana book I managed to learn many vocabulary terms from the exercises in the back with the writing exercises (all spelled in hiragana and katakana, there is no kanji in that workbook). I tried and dabbled lightly in the Kanji Vol 1 book, but I wasn’t ready for that just yet back then.

I ONLY used those resources until the end of August 2018 and added Memrise too my list of apps during that time. I gained A LOT of vocabulary knowledge (and some basic grammar but that’s a post for another day) just from using three apps and a kana workbook over two and a half months. 

It was nothing fancy like some people tend to think? I didn’t somehow learn all these words over night.

Textbooks. Genki 1 and it’s workbook was my first ever textbook. This is one of the most widely known textbooks out there for learning Japanese from scratch. Most people know how vocabulary works for that resource. Each chapter introduces vocab and you learn it as you study the grammar and do the exercises.

Um, so, I’m gonna be honest for a second. I HATE TEXTBOOKS. I hate them with a fiery passion. *clenches fist* I stopped using Genki after completing half of the book because I felt like I learned nothing. It just wasn’t the resource for me.

At this point you’re staring hard at your phone, tablet, or computer like WHAT? Yeah… I didn’t hate them at first!! But because of my laziness and informal learning style, I grew to haaaate them. Textbooks are too “cookie cutter” in my opinion. But Taylor, don’t you use one right now? Yes, and let me explainnnnnn. I find that textbooks don’t give you freedom to expand! 

Remember when I asked on Instagram what were some things you’d like me to discuss or talk more about? One user messaged me and wrote,

“How [do] you apply grammar and vocabulary? Because I try to come up with sentences on my own then look up examples of its usage but I continuously use the same type of examples. But when I look at other example there is so much vocab and other grammar structures that go into play that I don’t understand, so it’s hard for me to find a balance that will make me push myself but also know that I can decently understand…”

That’s EXACTLY what I struggled with, with Genki! Textbooks only provide examples for that lesson and the grammar it teaches at that point. So you only know those words (and grammar) in those contexts only. You try to make your own sentences but you end up only using those words and those grammar points over and over. 

There’s simply no opportunity to expand.

Then when you look up other examples you see other new words (and grammar) and it freaks you out because suddenly you don’t feel like you’ve learned anything! This is the e x a c t reason I hate textbooks. 

My answer? For me, I don’t depend on textbooks anymore for vocabulary. They’re amazing for referencing vocabulary and pulling grammar structures, but textbooks only give a limited amount of vocabulary and if that’s all your rely on when learning grammar, it’s going to be rough. It stagnated my learning when I did that. 

When I make my own sentences now, I pull vocab I've been learning from apps, social media, reading, etc. I could go on and on about this, but that’s not the point of this post. I’ll discuss my more of my hatred for textbooks later. Same with grammar and how I make my examples and such. I’ve already gone off on a tangent long enough, hehe. (I hope that answered the above question though! If not, I hope future posts will! Or just message me, lol.) 

Other textbooks I have used after Genki for vocabulary gain is Basic Japanese by Tuttle and the にほんご90日 series.

YouTube. Japanese Ammo with Misa is my love. I love her videos and her personality. Her teaching style is relaxed, but she gets the job done. She has a wide variety of grammar videos along with lots of other videos related to Japanese and Japan.

After my downfall with Genki 1 and some discouragement that led to a nearly three months hiatus of studying, I started using her videos to get the grammar knowledge I needed in January 2019 (I have been learning (counting the hiatus) for about 6 months at this point). 

It’s the perfect things for a lazy learner like me, hehe. I could sit down at my desk and watch one of her videos (they can be anywhere from 8 to 40 minutes long) and watch, pause, and rewind as much as I wanted to write notes with ease. I was learning the grammar I needed to know and learned SO MUCH VOCABULARY. 

She uses common words you find in textbooks, but she also throws in culturally relevant words. She references Pokemon, manga, TV/anime, music, etc, vocabulary all the time! She even teaches the informal/casual variations of words along with formal/polite variations and that’s where I gain so, so, so much vocab! I still use and reference those videos to this day!

PRESENT DAY:

Okay, I just explained what I did to start learning vocabulary from the beginning to about ~5 months ago. I rambled a lot, I know… But did you kind of see the point I was hoping to make? I did not stick to one resource for learning vocabulary (and kanji). 

I didn’t not, nor do I still, learn vocabulary in a “traditional” way. There is no one way to learn everything you need to know. Over that course of time I learn about ~35-40% of my current vocabulary knowledge. Wait… Taylor… You learned ~35-40% of your vocabulary over the course of 10 months, but you’ve learned the other ~60-65% in less than 5 months? Yes, and I’ll explain below~~~

What I mainly use now, app wise, to gain vocabulary knowledge is Memrise, Quizlet (rarely though), Kanji Tree, and LingoDeer. I even use Instagram to learn new vocab too! I follow users who teach vocabulary (and grammar) with their posts. Yes, you will see lots of repeated terms but that’s exposure and review! 

Here are some profiles I really like for introducing vocabulary (new or review): boxofmanga, japanesepod101 (Instagram infographics only), japanese_language_mlc, j_aipon, blue_aoi, and _urabanashi_. 

I also suggest you find native Japanese Instagram users. Not just celebrities or idols. I mean average natives who use Instagram the same way we use our private accounts. I follow larger profiles (500+ followers) for the fact that I don’t want to be a creep and follow someone who only has like 100 or 200 followers. So, I follow some “mommy blog” Instagram's because they tend to use simpler vocabulary when referring to their kids. I also follow some book reviewers, writers, and one guy who loves camping! You get to see lots of natural Japanese this way and it shows common words that are used. I don’t understand a lot of it, but I’m being exposed to the language!

And by now you’re asking, “Okay, but how do you learn vocabulary NOW?” I’m going into N4 if you’re going to look at this from a JLPT stand point, but I don’t only learn strictly N5, N4, N3, etc level material. (That’ll be another post too, lol. Pssst… it’s another “cookie cutter” issue with me.)

Well, those apps mentioned above, obviously, but those only make up about ~30% of my vocabulary gain now. I use my textbook にほんご９０日 Vol 1 as a reference and gain some vocabulary there and I have a couple JLPT related vocab/kanji lists I use too, so that’s like another ~5% of where I get my vocab. 

I get the other ~65% from reading. Yup. Reading. Literally that’s it. I read all the time. That’s one of the reasons I wanted to learn Japanese! 

I have a short story digital bundle I read often from TheJapanShop.com and it’s aimed at beginners and becomes “harder” as you move to the next book and so on. I read through them and when my brain sees a word I know I’m like, “Cool.” But when I don’t know a word I see, I either look it up quick and write it in the margin or I continue on. I learn a lot through context clues. 

Here’s an example sentence from Story Two in Book One of the Japanese Reader Collection offered from TheJapanShop.com. 

「この傘は、雨が降るといつのまにか傘が開き、晴れると傘が閉じている…」

Roughly translated to “This umbrella opened unnoticed when it began raining and upon it becoming sunny the umbrella closed…”

When I read that sentence, I knew all the vocabulary except いつのまにか. The stories have lovely vocabulary guides, so when I looked it up, it said that it meant “before one knows; while unaware” and I took what I knew from the rest of the sentence and managed to learn that new word as a result! This is the best way I could explain how I use reading to expand my vocabulary… ^_^” Just taking what you know and expanding on it over time. I use this same method for grammar, but that’s saved for another post, lol.

I also use NHK New Web Easy to read articles about current events in Japan. It’s set up for native elementary and middle school students so they can read within the kanji and vocabulary they’ve learned so far in life. Guess what? That’s PERFECT for a language learner who has an okay-ish foundation with vocabulary. I learn so much everyday vocabulary that way.

Lastly, I read books and manga. Yup, manga. I don’t use these resources much right now because they’re bigger and more intimidating. I haven’t “officially” started a book but I’ve opened and read passages quite often to sort of test myself. Manga is simpler since there are fewer words than a novel, but they’re bigger than a short story or a news article. You’ve seen on Instagram that I’ve begun reading よつばと！ and so far I’m having a blast! I’ll talk about specific things I’m reading later.

Sooooo…. That’s basically it.

Most of my vocabulary gain now is through exposure to Japanese through social media (bless the internet), reading, and some usage of apps like Memrise and LingoDeer. I use no formal education or study plans or any structure at all. 

My word retention grew to be nearly double these last ~5 months because I built on what I knew and it grew easier and easier for me to learn and retain those words over these last few months. I never believed it, but there is definitely a language hump. Once you crawl over that, things simply become easier. It just takes A LOT of time and effort (and tears) to get over that hump. But, I believe anyone can do it, you just have to be determined and eager enough.

One tip I like to give is to learn through context. Don’t just learn lists of words and kanji. What’s the point? You can recite them, but can you USE them?

Oh, quick thing, I want to point out about how I personally learn vocabulary. I failed to realize this right away when I started learning Japanese, but quickly caught on and now hold onto this belief firmly.

I learn vocabulary and kanji together. 

I do not separate the two. I do not have a separate notebooks for vocabulary and kanji. I don’t even have a notebook at all actually for them, lol. When I post on Instagram that I’m focusing on kanji today, it means I’m just learning vocabulary or reviewing it. The 1026字の正しい書き方 book I use that teaches “kanji” is mainly for vocabulary expansion and how to write those kanji (stroke order). I don’t study the individual meanings of the kanji character, I study the example words it lists. That’s one way on how I’ve been expanding my vocabulary so rapidly.

Kanji is vocabulary. 

Kanji should be treated the exact same way that hiragana and katakana are treated in my opinion. Jokingly, kanji is just fancy kana. ;)

If you “fear” kanji, you’ll have a bad time. I joke and say now when I see an insane kanji or a difficult one, “Damn, that’s some angry squiggles right there.” and it makes learning it that much more enjoyable. :)

For example, 食 means “eat, food.” Okay, cool that kanji has a food related meaning. But I’m not going to do that for thousands of kanji especially since each kanji has multiple readings depending on how it’s used. It’s simply impossible! I found I personally learn better when I learn the kanji in it’s “true” form, aka, in WORDS. 

食べる - to eat / 食べ物 - food / 食事 - meal / 朝食 - breakfast / etc.

Holy crap, not only did I learn the kanji 食 effectively, I learned four words and THREE other kanji! (I’m over dramatic, I know, lol.)

Vocabulary is all interconnected. You can’t learn one thing without stumbling and learning other things by accident. Learning through exposure is the best in my opinion. It’ll be tough to begin with when you don’t know much and it will cause you to doubt yourself and your ability to learn this language. But, just be patient. Learning five, three, or even one word a day is progress.

Small progress eventually builds up to big progress as Yuta says. ;)

Words are meant to be strung together and form sentences for you to read, enjoy, and react to. That’s why books exist. You read those words and sentences and they make you feel warm and fuzzy or cry or laugh. Don’t keep them at an arm's length and treat it like it’s some delicate flower. Language is a not just lists of words, kanji, and grammar points. It’s a culture and way of life for people. Treat it like an old friend and play with it (or go get a beer with it, ya know, whatever gets this point across, lol)!

I tend to treat language learning like I’m a curious five year old. I’m constantly asking questions and discovering new things and it just sparks that fire that makes you want to explore more and more. 

I don’t take it seriously (from an academic view) and that’s why I find some stuff so easy. It only becomes difficult if you make it difficult. Everyone learns differently. There is no one way to learn Japanese and there is no one way to learn specific parts of Japanese. Also, don’t compare yourself! It only ends in self doubt and discouragement. 

Explore and try out all sorts of things. Try out the free apps, read articles online, watch YouTube videos, just do SOMETHING. Don’t look for the “perfect” resource or routine. Just. STUDY. You’ll find in time what works for you and what doesn’t.

Language learning is no race. There is no ribbon or trophy at the end for becoming fluent overnight. Take your time and enjoy the process, you’ll be learning your whole life, ‘kay?

I’ll talk further on how I review it in another post. :)

LingQ

https://www.lingq.com/

Since I talk about it LingQ a lot I might as well make a dedicated post. The site founder, Steve Kaufmann, talks about it a lot on his YouTube channel if you want more info here.

Quick warning, LingQ isn’t free, you really need to get the monthly premium subscription to use it properly. Costs about as much as Netflix premium.

It’s a site and app where you read short texts with accompanying audio to build your vocabulary and listening skills in your target language. You can work with the mini-stories the site provides, content other users upload to the site, or you can import your own content like news articles and ebooks in your target language (however if you don’t own the copyright to what you upload, you can’t share it publicly on the site with other users).

LingQ keeps track of your vocabulary count, it counts every form and conjugation of a word as a separate word (so the word count isn’t dictionary-accurate but still a good metric for your level), and you can always review your vocab with flashcards and exercises like Duolingo has.

As you go through texts, you select and translate blue words then set them to yellow (or white if you already know the word).

blue words = new words, words you haven’t encountered yet on the site yellow words = words you’re learning white words = words you know

Listening to the audio along with the text is the best way to learn with the site. There’s a playlist so you can review lessons by listening to the audio through the app on your phone to improve your listening comprehension.

Languages they offer: Arabic, Belarusian, Chinese, Dutch, English, Esperanto, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Latin, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Ukrainian

In beta (means they might not have all 60 mini-stories or full support of the language): Bulgarian, Cantonese, Catalan, Chinese (Traditional), Croatian, Czech, Danish, Gujarati, Hebrew, Hungarian, Indonesian, Malay, Persian, Romanian, Serbian, Slovak

LingQ and my language course books are the main resources I use now, and I’m using it to help me read my first full books in Turkish and Spanish

after three months, my personal language challenge is over, so i thought i would recap about my experience and progress [under the cut]!

some quick stats before i get started -

⭐︎ 91 days ⭐︎ 50 hours of Spanish study ⭐︎ 83 hours of Japanese study ⭐︎ 60 days of writing challenges ⭐︎ 25 page increase in reading speed per hour [in Spanish] ⭐︎ 133 hours total

Experience:

i have been studying languages intensively since the end of february [that french challenge], but kicked it up just a smidge this summer, to average out over an hour of studying per day. i didn’t study every day in my last month [and didn’t actually meet my goal, but more on that later], so it was closer to two hours than my data shows.

as i have said a thousand times before, motivation means nothing. doing anything past three days requires discipline for me. following this challenge actually helped my ability to structure my days, because i would not have been able to fit in studytime otherwise!

it was ridiculously fun though, and i’ll give you a peek at what my methods looked like [month of may]:

SPANISH:

podcast: i listened to native-content podcasts, and especially enjoyed Radio Ambulante!

book: in may, i was reading La Sombra Del Viento [more on my reading speed in a second].

convo: this was actually an impromptu conversation while studying, so that’s why i recorded it here, but i didn’t really track practice in that manner.

nva: the noun verb adjective writing challenge was very helpful for building my vocabulary! the op deactivated afaik so i cannot link the post, but you should be able to find it easily.

JAPANESE:

duo: i wanted to see if duo could manage to supplement my learning even a little, and it did for the first few parts of the course, so that’s what you see. i actually quit duo jpn in july because there just was not enough kanji in the latter half of the course, and ya girl cannot read those syllabaries that quick

anki / kg: already detailed these in this recap post of may!

vocab / notes: i used this site [wikibooks] and these sites [wasabi jpn]/[the japanese page] for vocabulary lists and grammar notes.

netflix: aggretsuko and rilakkuma were the shows i watched, and also a couple of movies!

Progress:

Spanish was my biggest initial focus because I really needed to practice and make sure I could teach a class in it by fall. It was more of getting comfortable with actually operating in another language vs. truly studying, so I focused a lot on writing and speaking on the fly. by the end of the summer, speaking in Spanish had become nearly second-nature to me. Even at work, I never referred to notes to ‘make sure I remembered’, I just knew! 

Additionally, my Spanish reading speed was absolutely abysmal, but after a few weeks of reading for an hour every day, I nearly doubled that page/hr count, which made Spanish literature less of a chore, and more fun to do. 

I no longer ‘study’ Spanish officially, too. Just working on making it a part of different aspects of my day. :-]

As for Japanese, I am still at the bottom, in all honesty. It takes around 100 hours to hit A1 in it, and I am at 83, so I have a bit to go because I did not hit 50 hours of study in July. But, I can construct basic sentences, and know a good chunk of kanji. I’m starting to pick up words in songs as well. I want to be a well-rounded N5 by the time the new year rolls around, but i’ll be covering that journey on @debuccalization!

OVERALL:

Kinda relieved that I am at the end of the gap year, and can actually look back and feel satisfied with the goals I planned out. Studying languages for five months at this level is something I will not be able to do again for quite some time, but I hope I don’t need to! Now, I can work on maintaining the knowledge I have accumulated, and hopefully be more diligent about moving forward with my skills. 

Thank you to everyone who participated in the challenge with me [I know some of you are still at it, so keep going]! I am no longer tracking the summer challenge tag, but please feel free to start your language challenge at any time. :-] 

Again, if you have any questions, please ask!

19 Questions

tagged by @l-y-r-i-u-m-g-h-o-s-t

…:U!

Rules: Answer 19 questions and then tag 19 people who you want to get to know better.

Nickname: Sketch

Zodiac: Virgo (I blanked and was like ‘Year of the Snake…?’)

Height: Almost 4’11”

Last movie I saw: All the way through? ………….. I think it was Little Nemo on YouTube. But random clips I’ve seen more recently? Pieces of the BNHA movie with Spanish subtitles…

Last thing I googled: Zodiac. Because I forgot which things were the Zodiac. 8);;; Before that, I think it was the first line of a police station’s address ‘cause I needed the full address to Uber there for some paperwork. BY THE WAY…. Uber has NO IDEA where that address is and kept sending the poor Uber drivers in circles. I had to use Google Maps to direct them.

Favourite musician: WAIT, DO GROUPS COUNT? ………………………. I don’t have a favorite single person. :C

Song stuck in my head: Nothing. I’m listening to 10 Minute Power Hours and thus NO MUSIC CAN HURT ME… But a few days ago it was Pentagon’s song Humph! ‘cause y’know. YouTube told me it exists and there is orange eye shadow and I had to process that.

Other blogs: I only have one Tumblr. I get asked if I have an adult one for adult art and I’M SORRY TO SAY THAT I JUST DON’T MAKE ADULT ART… Are Twitters blogs? I have one, but I forget about it every other day ‘cause I don’t follow a lot of people and the way it chooses the posts I see and their order confuses me.

Do I get asks: Not normally since I haven’t been doing anything Dragon Age related, but some Lindrel stuff is going around again and someone told me Lindrel is sexy.

Following: Idon’tunderstandthequestion.

Amount of sleep: I usually get about six hours and then wake up feeling sick. I’m not good at sleeping. xD;;

Lucky number: Numbers don’t give me luck, but I like 4, 2, and their multiples. EXCEPT FOR 36. ‘Cause I don’t like 3 and I also don’t like 9. (36 is 9x4.) ‘CAUSE 9 IS 3 TIMES 3 AND YOU CAN’T DO THAT.

What I’m wearing: Long-sleeved, black shirt by Carhartt ‘cause it has a SHIRT POCKET. Also black pants that are probably for yoga. Spoilers: This is what I always wear at home. I literally have eight sets of the same clothes. Then for work it’s Armachillo shirts and Lee’s blue jeans (jeans I bought from SEARS). I’m simple and can’t handle thinking about fashion. If I like it, I buy a week’s worth and that’s that for two years and then I try to rebuy the same stuff as my wardrobe disintegrates around me. Next step is for my next set of Armachillo shirts to all be blue… Currently, Monday and Thursday are blue, Tuesday and Friday are red, and Wednesday is green. I can’t go to Publix on Wednesdays or else people think I work there ‘cause it’s almost the exact same green and looks like the manager attire.

Dream job: I just want to be comfortable. I haven’t figured out how to do that yet.

Dream trip: I don’t like traveling. Dream trip is to not take a trip. >->

Play any instruments: Not anymore. I used to play a little piano and I was good at French horn and eventually got a double horn (plays French horn and B flat horn- you use the thumb key to switch the set of pipes you’re using), but this was back in middle school. I’m turning 30 this year. xD;;;; OH. I learned a tiny bit of guitar in college, but it hurts my hands, so I have NOT pursued that.

Languages: English. I used to be okay with Spanish, I just had too low of a vocabulary in the topics I was interested in. I’ve also taken a TINY BIT of French and I’ve had a semester of Russian, German, Latin, Modern Greek, Chinese, and Japanese. I’ve derped with Norwegian Bokmål on Duolingo, but I stopped using Duolingo. I tested too high in its Spanish course, so I still didn’t know the darn vocab. xD;;;;;; I want to learn a little Korean and ASL. Haven’t practiced anything, though. I barely speak freakin’ English now. >8V

Favourite songs: I don’t know. I’m not sure I have any favorites, and it’d be weird to say them given that I pay more attention to the sound/feeling of a song than the words. Usually when I say I like something someone will either say they think it’s dumb or try to discuss the meaning and I’m there like, “I can’t even hear the words clearly and I don’t understand poetry and then half of what I listen to isn’t English so I don’t know what you want from me.”

Random fact: I’ve barely been drawing these past two years ‘cause of work and mental health, but I’m trying. >8I…!! I feel super guilty that people want to see more Lindrel, though, ‘cause I’ve been focusing on other characters who aren’t in the DA universe. I’m sorry. ;o;

Tagging: I haven’t been talking to anyone, but I’ll tag @smuttine and @hobovampire if you haven’t done this recently. >8U! Anyone else can feel free to consider yourself tagged and tag me back so I can read about you. Just ‘cause I rarely initiate doesn’t mean I don’t want to hear about you. I’ve clicked through the first few pages of all of your blogs. B) KEEP MAKING ART (THAT INCLUDES WRITING) AND WORKING TO IMPROVE YOURSELVES AND THE WORLD WE LIVE IN. KEEP RESEARCHING AND LEARNING. DON’T BE AFRAID TO HELP OTHERS. DON’T BE AFRAID TO BE WRONG. LEARN AND GROW. >8U!!!

Rules: Answer 21 questions and then tag 21 people who you want to get to know better.

tagged by @elizabethsyson

Nickname: Muggle is my nickname, but when I went by Muggle in person for more than a month at a time, it naturally got abbreviated, usually to Mugz

Zodiac: Aquarius

Last movie I saw: into the spiderverse (same answer as last time. I don't watch that many movies tbh except around Christmas. unless YouTube counts in which case... music of some sort? idk links for the next answer)

Favorite musician: changes by the day. I've kinda been in an acapella and/or folk music mood recently so the Maccabeats and Peter Hollens are in my YouTube and Spotify history a lot recently. also I'm eternally in awe of Forte Handbell Quartet (eta a longer video; i recommend skipping to the techno piece or the Jurassic Park theme)

Last thing I googled: "vine why are you buying clothes at the soup store" (my wife hasn't seen it; also i can't find the vine because apparently it's a much bigger meme than I realized). before that it was "chgrp not root" because work and group permissions are useful when they work

Song stuck in my head: well for most of the day when I haven't been actively listening to something, it's been the Pokemon RSE route-walking music. (but that somehow happens frequently when I'm in the no-music-no-internet room at work, as I was for most of the day, and I don't know how I accidentally trained my brain to make that connection). right now, surprisingly, I don't have any background music playing in my head. I think it's because the humidifier provides just enough white noise that my brain doesn't feel the need to provide its own

Other blogs: my main is @muggle-the-hat and I'm a mod on @why-do-neurotypicals but we've gotten one ask ever so that blog has been dormant for a while. I have a bunch of other sideblogs, but they're all small and I use different screen names on each of them (enby life: no idea which name suits me best so I may as well try them out) so i feel like it would just confuse things to link them.

Following: blogs matching all the themes of my sideblogs, (including this one, which is writeblr), korean langblr, jumblr, assorted fandom blogs, authors of my more favorite fanfictions (some overlap with other categories), and irl friends and acquaintances (including one fandom blog turned irl friend)

Do I get asks: on my main if at all, which isn't really surprising because i have hundreds of followers there and maybe 60 followers combined among the rest. but I get asks far less often than I reblog ask memes so... I'm always happy to get more. I do get tagged in ask games more on this one, but writeblr is actually vaguely organized about tag lists so that makes sense. also I used to get tagged a bunch on my main and I rarely could find the posts again to follow up when I had time to answer.

What I’m Wearing: pajamas. staying warm and cozy

Lucky number: I don't remember what I said last time, but I like a lot of numbers. 64 is a good number. recently I've been debugging software in which 0x3E is my lucky status number and 0x0E taunts me. (um, decimal 62 and 14). Also my other favorite number i can't share until it's no longer the combination to the lock to the Secret Room. (or realistically never because opsec and i shouldn't make public the types of parents we use for that combination lock), honestly I aim to be like.... ah, I'm sure the anecdote involves G.H. Hardy but i don't remember on which side. anyway one mathematician remarked to another about how the id number of the taxi he rode in was sadly uninteresting, and the one I aspire to be like, argued "what are you talking about, this number is interesting because ______" and I'd like to be able to do that for any arbitrary number thrown at me. (hi yes math is good, history is hard, math history is interesting yet i still forget the people even if i remember the math. except when things are named after people, but that tends to be, like, Euler and LaGrange and other people who did lots of cool science things so i remember the methods and the names of the methods separately which never helps)

Amount of sleep: ....depression both screws with my sleep schedule and means I always feel like I need more sleep except when I wake up at 5pm and feel like I've wasted the day. so yeah. I can never get enough sleep

Favorite food: yes (why do I have to pick a favorite?) uh, chocolate in most forms, many other sweet things, red meats (especially if served with potatoes), curry (especially if it has "too much" ginger), fresh-baked bread, chai the way my favorite local Indian restaurant makes it (spicier with just a little bit of sweet, which is the opposite of what i can get from the mocha machine at work which is wayyy sweet with a hint of spice but that inferior chai is still superior to coffee so i drink too much of it). also vegetables which I really don't eat enough of: sauteed zucchini and onions, roasted broccoli

Dream trip: dreaming requires creativity and tbh I funnel that mostly into my writing instead. I wouldn't mind going back to Korea for another visit though

Dream job: my current job is pretty good when I feel productive and when my debugging tools actually produce data maybe??? (they were not being helpful today. but i still mostly like my job.) dream job is probably this but with seniority and confidence and double the salary (while living in a similar area of the country; I wouldn't want to double my salary by moving to work for Google in California and having less available after rent than I do now)

Describe yourself as aesthetic things:

the smell of old books

the first glow of sunrise (the sunrise painting the mountains pink and gold)

a rainbow in the spray from a waterfall

the flicker of distant lightning (watching a thunderstorm fade into the distance)

this picture

Random fact: about me or about the world?

how about a combination answer: when we got our new handbell music this season, we only looked at half the pieces our first rehearsal and afterwards I tried to look up one of the pieces we hadn't gotten to on YouTube because it's got a weird time signature and I wanted to get a feel for how fast it would go and how strict the counting is...... except it turns out we're the first group to ever play the piece. it was commissioned recently but seeing my conductor's name on the page didn't tell me how new it was because he's super prolific. (the fact that it was on printer paper without the publisher's graphics should have been a giveaway but it's only the second time I've been among the first to play one of his pieces so I think I can be excused for not realizing)

Languages: mostly just English, but I took Spanish for years, so I can hold simple conversations in it. I can almost read sound out Hebrew fast enough to keep up in services, and I know some random Hebrew vocab but comparatively no grammar. and I took Korean in college, enough that I can recognize sentence structure but I can really only speak tourist-Korean, though I can sound anything out (if it's typed. handwriting is hit or miss.) in both Hebrew and Korean (and Spanish tbh but i don't often listen to Spanish music) I'm very proud when I can separate the words enough, listening to a song, to translate them without looking up the lyrics. also I tried to learn Japanese from Duolingo when it was new, but I still hadn't gotten the kana straight when it started progressing to kanji so that was a rough time and I went back to Hebrew.

tbh I "dabble" in "language learning" which really means I start a million courses on Duo and stick with none of them. with the notable exception of French, which I acknowledge is super common and probably a good idea to learn but the spelling and pronunciation seem so arbitrary I'm scared to look close enough to learn it properly, and I've never particularly considered starting the Duolingo course for French

I think I lost a few questions, because that's only 18 answers. whoops.

um... who to tag

@abluescarfonwaston if school hasn't drowned you in work yet and @copperscales I'm interested in both of your choices for lucky numbers especially.

... wow I'm blanking on other mutuals I haven't tagged recently. as usual lmk if you'd like to be edited in, or just answer the questions and tag me back, that's great too.

[App Review]—LingoDeer (Korean)

**EDIT** The LingoDeer team read my review and fixed some of the things I pointed out :>

Sorry for shuffling my upload schedule around so much lately! However with these new apps coming out, I want to jump on them and give my first impression ASAP!

I posted my review of the Korean Duolingo on Reddit, and the comments just exploded... it got a little messy, but one of the gems to come out of it was the recommendation of another language learning app called LingoDeer. Honestly I was a bit skeptical, but I decided to try it out... and I’m glad I did! This app also has its problems, but it’s generally fairly solid. Just like with DuoLingo, I took some extensive notes as I was playing through the levels (and some of my friends were doing it at the same time, so they reported abnormalities to me as well). Actually, I find this app a bit more similar with the Chinese-learning app HelloChinese than with Duolingo for a few reasons, which we’ll see later. Let’s get into it.

What is LingoDeer?

LingoDeer is a language-learning app for the three major east Asian languages, Korean, Mandarin Chinese, and Japanese. In this review, I will focus on the Korean course and give my views on the Chinese one in a later post. When I was told about this app, the person who linked me to it said that it was developed by teachers of those three languages rather than just volunteers like Duolingo uses, so that’s a bonus.

Very first impressions

The first thing I noticed that the LingoDeer app’s design and interface is very crisp and clean, which I appreciate a lot. I experienced some loading delays more than once, but my friends who tested the app out with me said that they didn’t get much of that at all, if any. I think maybe it has something to do with my Wifi, because my phone was showing a less-than-perfect connection strength when I was testing the app. Anyway, just be aware that you might run into some loading screens.

Learning Hangul

The Hangul learning portion of this app blew me away, to be honest. The usual romanization was there, whatever whatever (you know my feelings about romanization already), but what I loved was that the sounds are introduced in a logical order, starting with related vowels, and it shows you the stroke order for the Hangul. And those audio files...! The audio files in this app are SO quality, a lot better than the unfortunate robot voice that Duolingo used. The Hangul learning section is huge and extensive, and going through every single consonant and vowel would probably take someone forever, but luckily you can skip the Hangul level if you don’t need it, or you can take advantage of their Hangul charts. There are three charts, and you can tap on each consonant-vowel combo to have it read out to you. There is also a page explaining how Korean syllables are structured. So much information is given; it’s wonderful!

Getting in to learning

Once you refresh your Hangul skills (or not), you can start with the first level. This is the first major downfall of the app—there is no way to test up to higher levels, so you must start from the bottom. This seems like a major oversight considering comparable apps like Duolingo and HelloChinese have these features.

Anyway, once you tap into the first section, there are notes waiting for you if you swipe to pull up the tile to the left, only the edge of which is visible as it starts you right on an actual lesson tile. It would be nice if the notes were the first tile, as in HelloChinese, because it’s very easy to miss. Anyway, the notes are extensive and really well done except for some typos and weird English translations on occasion that probably could have been caught with one more read-through. Typos actually appear in other parts of the app too, and it does sort of detract from the nice feel of everything else. You can just forgo the notes if you want, and if you find yourself needing more information while you’re in the level, you can just tap on the part of a sentence you’re curious about and a notes window on that element will pop up. This is similar to HelloChinese, and this is what Duolingo’s app very conspicuously lacks.

Now, it’s time to actually start the lesson. You will be presented words with the Hangul and the romanization, which I was very sad to see, but you can turn the romanization off! Similar to HelloChinese; which lets you choose if you want to see only Pinyin, only Hanzi, or a mix of the two; LingoDeer lets you choose all romanization, all Hangul, or a mix.

The activities in the learning sections are very similar to Duolingo and HelloChinese. You can expect to match the word you hear with a picture, insert grammatical elements into the right places in sentences, unscramble sentences, and more. One of the activities that I do not like is this one where you see the romanization and match the appropriate Hangul with it. I purposely turned off the romanization, and people should move away from it as early as possible, so seeing those kinds of questions, though they are very few and far between, was a bit of a letdown. Also, I was disappointed to see that there are no speaking questions like in HelloChinese (in that app, you will listen to and see a sentence or see an image representing a word and then read/repeat it back into the phone). Also, while the audio files are, as I already said, amazing, this app is very quiet. Perhaps it’s because I’m used to HelloChinese (which I use a lot lately to work on my Mandarin) automatically reading things out, including the correct answer once you submit your answer to a problem for checking, I find it a bit annoying that if you want to hear read-outs of a lot of the sentences, you have to actually tap the sentence to hear it. Also, there is no indication that this is actually something that’s possible except for in cases where you’re on a listening screen, so some users might not be aware that they could be getting more audio input than what the app automatically provides. Maybe if they had a little play button or something next to those sentences it would be better.

Upon completion of a level, you can get up to five stars. When you first start studying, you set a goal for how many stars you want to get each day, and if you choose the lowest possible number (five) and do a single level perfectly, your study for the day is complete.

Review and stats

If you want to go back and review vocab or grammar flashcards, there is a section where you can do that. The review questions are the same as the regular level questions. You can choose to do a single lesson, or you can combine lessons for a comprehensive review. Also, there is spaced repetition listening practice, which is pretty cool. You can choose how you want the words and sentences presented, with Hangul, the English translation, romanization (ㅠㅠ), or just the audio and no writing. After listening, you can reveal the correct answer and rate your recall/performance “weak,” “good,” or “perfect.” You can also choose if you want a word or sentence-focused review. Seems like a good feature.

As for stats, you can check how long your learning streak (they wrote “steak,” as I said there are typos here and there) has been ongoing, and it even tells you how long you have studied for. There are some little achievement badges similar to Duolingo for things like learning time and streaks also. You can also set a time for reminders to study if you would like. However, I notice that the app is not synced to your phone’s clock but some other clock, perhaps that of the server it’s hosted on. So, for example, if I use the app in the morning here in Korea, it will still count any stars I get to the previous day since the app’s date hasn’t rolled over yet. There is not an option to change the app’s clock to sync to your time zone as far as I can tell.

Conclusion

LingoDeer’s Korean course is, in my opinion, a wonderful new app for those who are looking to start learning Korean! The pros and cons:

PROS:

GREAT audio files

Hangul presented in a logical manner

Lots of good notes and information on grammar

Spaced repetition practice and flashcards

Study reminders

cute deer mascot <3

CONS:

Slow loading at times

No function to test out of lower levels

Typos and unusual translations in notes and other places

App clock not synced to phone clock

No speaking practice

If updates are made to this app to fix any of the things I mentioned above, I’ll update this post (or maybe write a new one) to let you know. Happy studying~!

Lesson 0

Fuck it ay followers we’re learning Japanese together. I mean probably not, I doubt you guys are gonna Keep going with me but I’m trying to learn right now, and I figure if I pretend I’m doing it with other people I might see it through. This is just some background to the language It’s long and sorta unimportant but it might help some of yall out cause it took me a while to arrive at it.

So they Key so far from what i’ve seen to learning this language is to just pretend English Grammar doesn’t exist. “How would you say this english phrase in Japanese” is like the most counter productive thing in the world here because Japanese is pretty fundamentally different. Everything is Contextual.  学生だ。－ Literally means “Is Student”. And that is a grammatically correct sentence. Technically it can mean more than that depending on whatever sentences were said around it. So contextually it could mean, he is a student, she is a student, john is a student, whatever. Basically dont worry too much about English translations. Just learn Japanese Grammar for the way it works and dont worry yourself too much about how it translates into english. Especially to begin with. Another Key is to learn the Writing Systems. Japanese has 3 writing systems (4 if you count Romanji which is just the English Alphabet): Kanji, Hiragana, and Katakana. Katakana and Hiragana are 2 different sets of characters the represent the same sounds. Hiragana is for Japanese words, and Katakana is for English borrow words.  かわ(kawa) = river ナイフ(naifu) = knife Technically you can use whichever script you want so if you’re reading japanese you’ll be seeing pretty liberal use of both. The HARD one is Kanji which consists of like a billion characters and words that have different meanings and shit depending on what its next to. Its super hard but idk it has its uses to know. 二(ni) = 2 日(nichi)= Day 本(hon) = Book 日本(nihon) = Japan 二日(futsuka) = Second Day of the month (or 2 days) Like as you see if u put the kanji for 2 and day together it sounds nothing like putting the words for 2 and day together, but you can still sorta tell what it means. But when you put Day and Book together it makes japan? It would need its own post tbh, so I’ll leave the explanation alone for now tho. 

 Learning words in Japanese is just 100x easier if you know the writing. Like for starters, nothing that’s using Japanese is gonna use the Romanji. The only environment where you’ll see it is in super westernized beginners books and if you’re enough of a nerd to try learning Japanese you probably don’t wanna stick around that environment for too long. And the other thing is knowing the Writing just makes it a bit easier to learn vocab. 帰る＝kaeru, which means to go back 変える＝kaeru, which means to change They’re pronounced the same and if you were reading it in romanji it would be pretty much impossible to tell the difference at a glance, but with knowledge of the kanji (帰AND変) and knowledge of Hiragana, you can. Its harder at first but it does get easier as you go on.

Another Thing is, Learn a lot of fucking vocab words. This is probably the most important part because the more words you know, the less time you spend looking up words. Heres a sentence (In english this time lol). “The window-washer vented his frustrations with defenestration.” Like even native English speakers might not have come across the word defenestration in their fuckin’ lives, and would have to look it up to get full understanding of the sentence. Imagine it in a different language. I personally have no idea how to convey that thought in Japanese so if it was written in Japanese I’d have to look up every word just to finish that one sentence. More words = Less searching.

Last thing (and honestly its a weird point coming form me) but read/watch a lot of Japanese media. Seeing and hearing the language outside of the safe space of your beginner learning materials makes a lot of stuff easier. Makes it easier for you to find new words, know how the words you’re learning are typically used how it sounds, etc etc. It’s just a good resource. I think since its the end goal in the first place reading a bit and slowly over the course of your studies being able to understand and retain these materials is a good way to measure how good you’re actually getting. I have a manga here i’m learning how to read and i’m just slowly understanding the context of whats being said more and more. 

TL;DR: The way I’m planning on learning is by focusing on:

Learning Grammar while keeping in mind its not like english Learning The Japanese Writing System and not piggybacking off of it written in romanji Learning A metric fuck ton of vocab words Reading and Watching a lot of stuff so that the language is always a part of my day to day. The rest of these I’ll try to make sure im writing less for these posts lol. This is mostly for me, but if yall wanna learn with me i think it’ll be cool to learn with some of you guys if you wanna.

February Progress Update, March Goals:

(Updated as it’s now the end of the month) How February went:

Chinese novel chapters read in February (so far): 27 (a huge amount! Last month’s was 8. This month - 4 were Guardian, the rest are 寒舍)

Chapters I studied with Listening-Reading Method: 2 (Catch me barely doing L-R and just reading Guardian instead...)

Chinese shows watched: 6. (I expected this number to shoot up and I was right! Word of Honor - tian ya ke adaptation - is airing and I am watching the raws first then the English subs as they release. I’m also maybe going to start Anti Fraud League since I finally finished ep 1. YouTube recommended me another Zhen zhehan drama - he plays Zhou Zishu in woh. It’s called Demon Girl and I’d had it in my list to practice anyway with when I got bored since it’s set 1920-1940s, one of my fave drama settings, featuring a demon heroine in which demons are like mutants who live among us. Which happens to be my LITERAL favorite story setup - mutants/monsters/etc sci fi or supernatural setup in which the story uses it to tell fantastical tales while also commenting on real social issues. Some stories do it better than others - In The Flesh and Bureau of Transformer do excellently, Love and Redemption and Guardian do some fascinating stuff with it, Heroes touches on it only a little compared to Xmen which is known for it, and Merlin often failed to commit to a strong message. But regardless - if a story has this Setup I will ultimately wanna see. So that show definirely has 3 selling points now: my Fave story setup, a heroine as the lead, and an actor I like as the other lead. I also found Mystic Nine and LORD Critical World in HD on a chinese site so I’m very tempted to just watch them in chinese only since it’s more convienient then the english sub links I have for the shows. An interesting update: trying to watch a show this month was easier than in the past - last month I could barely watch Any shows, and before that I distinctly remember shows being harder to catch the details. I watched Anti Fraud League ep 1 fully this month and caught all details roughly without pausing - and like 3 sentences of exposition on main character Mi Huo I paused and replayed the scene just to catch all the chinese subtitles and clarify I understood correctly. I think I got about 90% of the details - because I was a little vague on some word meanings and just guessed on those. And grasped 100% of the overall plot. which is well beyond where I was at month 10-11ish last time I tried watching shows. Also yay! A detective show felt as easy as watching a fluff romance which is so great, because I like this genre much more! Although I am going to give a grateful shout out to Granting You A Dreamlike Life because... while the shows first 15 eps I did watch are Not My Thing, I watched it like 8+ months into learning and it was both a challenge and easy enough TO watch and keep watching. Which made it great for improving. I really think it helped a lot. And I also think... at this point I probably could rewatch guardian without eng subs and be fine. When I watch shan he ling today I guess I’ll find out if I can handle a wuxia plot though without eng subs lol)

Japanese Audio listened to: 14 (no change, this is since start of year)

Personal books read: 11 (since 2021 started - so 6 books in February. I have been reading SO MUCH lately, I’m really excited? I’ve been meaning to read so many of my books I just hadn’t gotten around to it. This is also likely to increase as I’m about to finish dmbj 2 next time I pick it up).

Some other things:

@a-whump-muffin​ u inspired me and sometime soon I will be trying to play KH in japanese again, and looking at ur super amazing grammar guide u made ToT (I might try nier automata if its bearable just because I’m playing all the drakengard/nier games right now but... the language is a lot more sci fi so i’m not sure that’d go well... also i want to check if my final fantasy type-0 has japanese language settings...). But like... I am definitely up for looking at a grammar guide, and looking up words on my phone as I play. Now that’s a study method i could DO maybe ToT and also like!!! ultimately i want to do it anyway!!! i just figured it would be drowning and chickened out! but like. to study doing what u wanted to do anyway in the language??!!! wowwww ;-; i mean that’s basically why i’m reading chinese but u get the idea

Other japanese updates: I’m still listening to quickleur I just haven’t done any listening lately (u can tell by the L-R status above lol). It did help a lot though even the bits I listened to, as far as refreshing my mind on particles and verb endings. And the explanation on sentence structures u gave @a-whump-muffin​ !! (who is god tier if ur studying japanese they are <3 <3 )

Part of the ‘personal books read’ goal - I’m counting any textbooks I read in that category, in the hopes if I frame it in my head as reading for personal interest instead of studying, I will do it. Ideally I would LIKE to read my DeFrancis Chinese books, Chinese Nature Method grammar book, Chinese Sentence Patterns book, 2 books I just ordered, my japanese reading books (the 1st one a good refresher the 2nd one literally could be... my textbook for years its got so much). Those chinese books in part because WOW I am so used to so much grammar in context when reading, but when I go to produce language I’m a hot MESS. And I think just like... I really should read those books and fill in the gaps in my understanding and like solidify the correct understanding of what I can comprehend. Sometime.... I ALSO should read my Alan Hoenig chinese characters book. But will I???? AHA. I forgot to mention in my last reading post - but brute forcing learning the hanzi has been going fine actually. I was concerned just looking up hanzi when reading, that I would struggle to learn the new ones. But I can confirm that reading has gotten easier, and I’ve picked up a LOT of hanzi I was previously brute force looking up repeatedly while reading. So like... as long as this keeps working, I’ll keep doing it. I’m very lazy and the path with least resistance and mental exhaustion is what I’ll keep doing, if it works, even if it might be slower. (Although I do think the hanzi books I have are very useful and have helped me speed up progress when I used them).

I learned how to make gifs this month and I’m overwhelmed with all the stuff I could try to do? Idk its very cool i’m very excited about it.

Goals for March:

Basically, we’re sticking to the quite steady study plan I’ve had the past few months, which has boiled down to: read chinese, L-R, listen/watch if desired, do something listening related in japanese if desired. It’s not well rounded or anything but I’m making steady progress and its easy to keep doing.

Anything in bold is what I’m doing right now/likely to do (although we know how often I just derail).

Read chinese novels. (This can include Guardian. Currently includes: hanshe, guardian. On hiatus: Tian Ya Ke).

Listen-Read Guardian. (Reading guardian in Any way is the priority so if this happens yay, but if it doesn’t I’ll be happy if I’m still working through guardian and just postponing the listening part).

Optional. Play video game in japanese, use a dictionary and grammar guide when confused af. This one’s imminently likely just because the instant I get Nier remastered I’m playing it, and also playing Nier Automata etc games, so like... the opportunity and desire to play the japanese versions of games I want to do that with WILL hit me. 

Optional. Watch chinese shows. This one’s also likely because a priest novel drama adaptation just dropped (Word of Honor, shan he ling, tian ya ke/Faraway Wanderer’s adaptation) and I don’t want to wait for the english subs. 

Optional - unlikely (I’m not in the mood to listen to stuff lol). Audios. Keep listening to Japanese Quicksleur when there’s down time (like playing games), and Chinese Spoonfed audio if I feel like it. 

Personal. Keep reading while I’ve got the motivation to. I am really enjoying getting through all these books I’ve wanted to read for so long. 

BELOW I will eventually link a list of story recs (also see tag rec list for more):

Poyun 破云 (recced)

Poyun 破云 2

一级律师 by 木苏里 (recced)

盗墓笔记 series

默读 by priest

他们的故事 by 一根黄瓜丝儿 

寒舍 by 夏灬安兰 pingxie supernatural au

818 (pingxie)

鎮魂 by priest (chapter 4)

天涯客 by priest

Qi Ye 七爷 by priest

六爻 by priest

FGEP

犹记斐然 foxghost rec

一受封疆 foxghost rec

女主大人 我错 gl

将军府小妾生存报告 gl

夜半衣寒 by 夏灬安兰 pingxie (can u tell i like this author)

(瓶邪同人)所谓一切发生在网配+番外 (writer and radio voicer pingxie au)

死亡万花筒 kaleidoscope of death

将军府小妾生存报告  

女主大人，我错了  

魔女霓裳

公主饶命 GL

民政局领到了媳妇

In progressing difficulty, books I want to read and should be ready to read now, a la foxghost’s recommendations:

那些風花雪月 by Gong Zi Huan Xi (took 14 months of study before I tried to read this, did try, did not click with me lol)

不正當關係 by Gong Zi Huan Xi (foxghost said this was the same difficulty as the story above, so I’m probably ready for this one too).

*SCI 谜案集 by ErYa (I’ve heard this somewhat easy to read, is a good story, and since its case-centered I think it would be a good intro to later reading books like Silent Reading by Priest)

龍圖案卷集  by ErYa (There is an audiobook on Ximalaya!)

黑風城戰記  by ErYa (sequel to novel above)

Then the recommendation says you should probably watch a lot of shows for some vocab (I sort of do so I’ll see how that helps me out), and you can start tackling xianxia, like Priest’s “六爻, and then 鎮魂, then 殺破狼, and pretty much any other of GZHX’s works.” I would guess this point is when Tian Ya Ke would be more my reading level, when 六爻 is, at the beginning. I would guess after 鎮魂 is when I could try to tackle Can Ci Pin. Sha Po Lang is steampunk and fantasy, so I would guess it has some of the sci fi type words - so if I’d be ready for that, I might be ready for Can Ci Pin at the same time.

A Semi-Comprehensive List of Learning Italian Struggles + Headcanons: by Haru

Hey kids welcome to another post that I wrote like a year ago but never posted--

A moment of silence for everyone who had to learn Italian once they joined the Vongola. Yes, they could always get translators but imagine they’re in the middle of a fight or doing some kind of hostage swap and the enemy is yelling at them in Italian and they both need to wait...for the translators to calmly repeat everything they’re saying...

also they gotta learn Italian so they can trash talk in it during fights. get your priorities straight. 

Inspired by @caelistus (I WILL ALWAYS LOVE OUR GAMER AU) and my own experiences learning Spanish lmao

After returning from the future and settling back into the normal swing of things (as normal as their lives can get now that Haru knows Tsuna’s next-in-line to be a Mafia boss and wow talk about something you don’t hear every Sunday night at dinner) 

Haru has packs and packs of flashcards organized by topic (food, leisure, athletics, etc.) bc she’s a math person and memorizing vocab sucks. Numbers are what she’s good at it. They’re simple. Universal. With numbers you don’t have to worry about correct spelling or pronunciation or this unfamiliar alphabet. Numbers are nice.

No seriously she has an entire box filled with piles of flashcards tied w/a pretty ribbon. 

Bookshelf slowly becomes mixed with Italian books next to her Japanese ones. As she gets more advanced she goes from children’s books to actual literature, as well as cooking + history books. 

Haru has always adored Italian food and menus were probably one of the first things she was able to fully read and understand. She was motivated by the desire to order food by herself to improve her food + restaurant vocab !!

the classic what do you mean objects have gender shock

the sequel: why tf is that chair feminine it is a chair an inanimate object how does it even decide that

keep Haru away from German 

So Japanese is subject object verb but Italian is subject verb object and even though Haru took English before she switched to Italian, she sometimes will still mix up the sentence structure.  

“Professore, Haru knows you just taught us this conjugation rule, but you immediately showed us at least 15 exceptions to it, so--” 

(Gamer AU) She picks up Gio and G’s little speaking habits even though it takes her ages to be able to understand them. They have a regional accent and use slang and talk really fast and she’s like ??? sLOW DOWN WE HAVEN’T REACHED THAT VOCAB SECTION YET

Haru invests in an Italian-Japanese pocket dictionary.

She also picks up their Naples accent which baffles her professore because how??? Has his most diligent student been watching a ton of Italian soaps set in Naples??? like how else does she know all their regional expressions and traditions

ALSO just imagine Haru trying to speak Italian and she inadvertently makes a hella racy innuendo without realizing it and G and Gio are rolling on the ground dying while Haru’s just like ????

honestly Haru probs knows more Italian curse words than her professore bc of all the time she spends w/Gokudera, the Varia, maybe Reborn??? (lmao I love the image of ‘Dera teaching her how to curse like a sailor) 

Also probs knows a bunch of Italian herbs and poisons bc of Bianchi ??? omg that’d actually be kind of funny like she doesn’t know how to say ‘pencil’ but she can rattle off 10+ herbs to poison someone and make it look like an accident (Haru’s Professore is mildly concerned. Like always.)

ACTUALLY THO if you really think abt Haru learning from exposure (friends handling Vongola business in Italian, trips to Vongola HQ in Italy, reading contracts and agreements) she’d know best the vocab and phrases that you’d hear the most in the mafia, so it’s almost kind of weird ??? She knows how to discuss things like alliances and body count and guns but struggles w/talking about the weather. 

i just realized that’s more sad than weird but. 

BONUS !! Cultural Differences

The physical contact + kisses on the cheek for hello and goodbye takes some getting used to, since in Japanese culture there tends to be less PDA. Also if the stereotype that Italian guys are total flirts is true, Haru would probably find it super embarrassing on her part bc they act so smooth and charming and she doesn’t know how to deal with this !!!

Teaching Dino and the other Italians who haven’t lived in Japan how to use chopsticks lmao 

rambles on triconsonantal roots, statistics, phonotactics

this was originally a short explanation of why triconsonantal roots can be expected from vocabularies as well as why indigenous japanese root lexemes tending towards CVCV is not a coincidence but it got away from me and i don't have a point it's just the first points might be interesting for conlangers if only because it might give an idea on what you need to create a naturalistic vocab from scratch and some math tricks you can play to get your self something sorry i think i started writing this at 8 now it's like 11 and im sleepy

Word frequency follows a statistical pattern called Zipf's law. Basically an inverse power law. The long and short of it - the most frequent words do most of the work. Some of this is because math and Zipf's shows up a lot, part of it is because no one wants to do more work than they have too, so this ends up forcing some things to do more of the work for both speakers and listeners, and other reasons. But because the most frequent words do a disproportionate amount of the work, it happens that around 850 lexemes or so most of a language's work is being done. It also happens that most languages vocabularies more or less stop at around 15000 words. Let's say an average language has around 25 segments. Let's ignore phonotactics for second and assume any sound can follow any sound. 25*25 = 625 25^3 = 15625 It happens that triconsonantal roots have the capacity to express a more-or-less "complete" set of lexemes. Of course, phonotactics exist, limiting the number of potential syllables. On top of that, for the same reasoning about reusing things being easier, it's easier if you reuse segment pairs, letting them exist together in a family of related meanings and thus letting brains do less word fetching. Now most languages don't like consonants next to each other. There's also some reasons in the physics of how we make sounds giving us a preference for open syllables cross-linguistically (CV). So what then? Well, the root of 25 is 5. So 25*25*25=25*5*5*25=25*5*25*5 Of course phonotactics still exist; likewise five of those "average" segments were also vowels. Real languages might instead prefer something like 19*5*20*5 = 9,500; this is reasonably fluent - most language courses consider around 8000 lexemes proficient. Add a few affixes to that and you get right back up to the 15000 ish lexemes needed to have a "complete" language. Of course you're reusing a lot of it because of the principle of least effort (why have to separate roots for similar ideas?) and some words will still sound awkward or too much like something detrimental to communication (don't want don't sounding like do!) and there's likely diachronic reasons for things as well so you'll have more affixes and that will balance the missing possible roots. So basically the triconsonantal root is because three segments carrying a large amount of information are expected to satisfy the needs of almost every language before giving information to vowels. So a language with extreme ablauting should be expected to gravitate towards triconsonantal roots. Also reversing that, if you wanted to posit a gestural language with no underlying vowels or something a reasonable rich consonant inventory of 25 or so would meet your information needs with an average of 3 consonants a root. I actually used this info in my model lang years ago and revisiting the conlang spurred me to make this post. Our physiological preference for open syllables  mean that most languages with information heavy vowels are going to like lexemes that are around 3~4 segments long, which, hey Japanese I'm looking at you. I don't know if the reason languages tend to have around 20 segments with 5 vowels is due to how close the sizes of vocabularies are to 25^3 or what but what ever reason the variables on either side of things are word structure comes from the relationship between them. The fact that most languages do not have exactly that is probably because it's a figment of other data. It just so happens that for the mechanical reasons things are sonorant or not means there's a lot more at end of the hierarchy than the other, and because the shape of the attack (the sound wave) between sounds has a sharper contrast going CV than VC (also air release issues and other things) the patterns created just happen to look in that neighborhood and we're starting from there to create the 15000 or so words we need for our experiences. and now i welcome you to look into English phonotactics and realize just how much this language does that carries no information and how fundamentally weird it is. like most languages maintain something around the 20*5 thing I'm talking about. When one thing is high usually the other is correspondingly lower; Arabic has a large consonant inventory but 3 vowels (well, 6, but information wise the chromeme can be boiled out as if it were another vowel or semivowel - you could make an argument that as far as segment/information ratios are concerned, long vowels are diphthongs consisting of vowel and a mora; but then you get into an issue of pharyngealization being more of a supersegmental feature than unique property of the 3rd series); Caucasian languages have famously small vowel inventories on average, but generally have shifted the features of the vowels to the consonants and even then there's probably some tradition interacting with underlying information and actualization. Indonesian has about 18 consonants in native words, and has 6 vowels. Outside of that kind of compensation Mandarin has a moderately large sum of vowels and consonants but has a highly restricted syllable that drives the number of possible syllables really far down. Japanese has a slightly high consonant to vowel ratio, but it has rules that forbid certain mora around semivowels and also as far as I can tell the "actually silent vowel" thing is a proscribed feature and actual human Japanese has some moraic consonants with underlying vowels and whatever, 22/5 is about good. Spain Spanish has basically the perfect ratio of 20/5 with some dialects loosing out on consonants and others picking up some vowels but basically the sometimes convoluted word structure from Latin's inflectedness can afford Spanish a little loss of the 20/5 ratio. Then there's English with something like 25/14 and on top of that root structures that look like CCCVCCC in addition to a set of words that wants to look like CCVCCVCV and honestly just what the fuck. I mutations and some segmentation issues (strengths is not monomorphemic) did a little of that and I guess the 14 or so could be charitably interpreted as something like 5*2+diphthongs with a broken symmetry because GVS but that's still high and weird. Hawaiian gets away with almost the opposite feature - 8/5 - but makes up for it with a lot of vowels in hiatus (right next to each other). That includes long vowels, which depending on how you count morae could mean 8/10 or 8/6 as far as information bearing goes. To be fair to English, though, this is kind of true of most languages in its family. All the Germanic languages have lots of consonants against lots of vowels, although for the most part this is explainable in part with historical reasons (and that some vowels don't (usually) occur monomorphemically), and like I said English broke its symmetries. IE languages in general have a weird relationship to this, such as with the Slavic languages (although they're considerably closer to typical if you treat palatization separately) or most of the romance languages (apart from Spanish but also Spanish kind of). Weird root structure is something all of us inherited from PIE, though, and that's a consequence of vowel reduction and morphemes fusing. Latin was comparitively agglutinative sticking parts of words together to get other words which is part of the word structure issues but most of these tread the thin line in the sand between decomposable and not for speakers. Indeed, Albanian took in a huge amount of Latin words - and chopped off basically everything carrying redundant or no information. So, English does have diachronic reasons for looking like it does, it's just - why haven't we pulled an albanian yet? Why haven't  we seen a vowel collapse instead of just a bunch of chain shifts after chain shifts? Granted we're seeing slight consonant reduction and there's some things like /nju.kju.lr/ over /nju.kli.jr/ but we're still just weird. I mean we aren't - as much as people make fun of English, the arguably weirdest thing about it is that it only marks the 3rd person singular present for agreement but that's inverted for some speakers and disappearing for others and has a good, recent diachronic explanation. As far as I can tell, English shows no signs of it's CV sum reducing. Although thinking about it, Old English had an inventory closer to that of Spanish's today, just with some extra vowels because germanic pedigrees. So the sum is about as old as the 3rd person -s. But it's not going anywhere? idk ranted waaaay too much sorry

The 5 Best Language Learning Apps | MyDomaine

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The 5 Best Language Learning Apps | MyDomaine

Confession: I started learning Spanish when I was 12 years old, and I’m still not fluent. Granted, my earnestness to master the language has wavered over the years, but now that I’m 28 (shudder), it’s time to take it seriously. I wish I could say this newfound motivation was all in the name of self-improvement, but the truth is that my boyfriend is a native Spanish speaker, and I desperately need to break the language barrier so I can communicate with his friends and family. Because listening to “Despacito” on repeat isn’t going to cut it, I’ve been testing out pretty much every language learning app on the market in preparation for our upcoming trip to Colombia.

Whether you’re hoping to finally reach fluency in Spanish like me or looking to brush up on your French before a much-deserved vacation, apps are great, affordable alternatives to traditional language learning software programs, which can be insanely pricey. If you’re feeling motivated to take your fluency to the next level, you’re going to want to keep scrolling. After much trial and error, I’ve found that these are the best language learning apps, hands down.

iTunes Store rating: 4.7 stars (with over 348K ratings)

Why they love it: “I love that Duolingo incorporates reading, listening, translating, and speaking. Each facet is woven into every lesson. I promise you, if you really commit to spending time and effort in Duolingo, you’ll make significant progress in learning a new language.” — Jimbo438

Why I love it: Duolingo is great for practicing on the go. Each lesson is short and effective and touches on elements of reading, listening, translating, and speaking, ensuring that you’re strengthening all your skills at once. I also love the streak-count feature, which keeps me motivated to practice every day.

iTunes Store rating: 4.8 stars (with over 96.4K ratings)

Why they love it: “I have tried many apps … and this one is the best by far. You can tell they are trying to bring you toward fluency by having the app encompass all manner of language learning such as conversation, memorization, grammar, listening, and refreshing what you learn.” — carlynro

Why I love it: Unlike most apps, Memrise features recordings with native speakers so you can better recognize words when you hear them used in real conversations. To take full advantage of the app’s offerings, I would recommend opting for Memrise Pro (the paid version of the app, which will set you back $9 a month).

iTunes Store rating: 4.7 (with over 51.1K ratings)

Why they love it: “I have to say I’m extraordinarily pleased with this app for the comprehensive nature of the lessons and the social interaction component they’ve built in. I also like that there is a nontraditional mix of material where some more advanced knowledge is mixed in to the beginner’s levels. I might actually become fluent this time!” — sud0ku

Why I love it: If you want to sound like a local, Busuu is definitely the app you should download. Part language learning app, part social media, Busuu is designed so your speaking and writing exercises are corrected by an actual native speaker.

iTunes Store rating: 4.5 (with over 22.9K ratings)

Why they love it: “I have been wanted to learn Spanish for a very long time but programs were all so expensive and there were limited programs as it was. Well, when I got my iPhone I discovered several great programs at a really great and reasonable price. I tried several of them through their trial periods and decided on this one and Duolingo. Combined I feel like I am learning faster than if I had gone with the one program that’s so popular, I think everyone knows which I’m talking about.” — bast3200bc

Why I love it: If you’re looking to gain confidence in your skills, Babbel is a great option. With comprehensive lessons that immerse you in practical, everyday conversations, Babbel will have you ready to book a trip to Mexico City in no time.

iTunes Store rating: 4.8 (with over 16K ratings)

Why they love it: “This app is the greatest thing to happen to language learning ever. Seriously. I’ve been studying one language or another my entire life and I have never looked forward to vocab drills before. I actually get excited to do my Drops review every evening.” — Spykitten

Why I love it: To make learning a new language less intimidating, Drops limits each session to just five minutes. If you feel like you’re too busy to start learning Spanish, French, Arabic, or Japanese, this app will prove you wrong.

Source

https://www.mydomaine.com/best-language-learning-apps