Chimmsen's slow and cozy Japanese journey

Japanese
#41

Small update for my language learning progress:

I would really enjoy learning 10 vocab a day, but my daily reviews still oftentimes hover above 100, so I just do 10 every other day. I feel like learning vocab is the most important thing right now for my progress, so going slow there is a bit of a nuisance. That’s why sometimes, I’ll allow myself ten new vocabs, even though my review count is above 100 :sweat_smile: Fun is important!

My reading slowed down a lot. Reading is usually the fun part for me and while I enjoy Yotsuba a lot, I already read a bunch recently so I long for a bit of change. Nothing beats reading outside in the sun, though, so I bet there will be a lot of reading again, when the temperature starts rising a bit more. Yotsuba started to become really easy to read now. I usually only look up about three words per chapter, all on the same panel mostly, when someone is talking about something more in depth and clues and context aren’t enough to understand.

Looking words up or even adding them to a deck is something I try to avoid for now. I just follow the vocab decks here, most of those words I don’t know yet will eventually come up in there.

Still enjoying elementary school materials, though. Currently doing word searches. Do I learn something by doing them? Really not much, but I’m not looking for the most time efficient learning method, but just for a fun past time. :slight_smile:

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#42

I’m almost through N2 level grammar and I still feel this way. It’s like I’ll never ever know enough vocabulary to just…read stuff. :woozy_face:

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#43

You are definitely learning something by doing such materials – you are seeing an actual language being used in the wild. You can’t get it from anki/grammar books.

Do you learn 10 words that the deck automatically selects for you, or do you manually add 10 words to the reviews? You might benefit from the second method.

On a side note, I picked up ハピネス manga about a week ago and I am having a blast reading through something like that for a change! With the current bookwalker event, I will probably have enough reading materials for the rest of the year :sweat_smile:

#44

Oh, I was considering reading ハピネス, what do you like about it? :slight_smile:

I was experimenting with making my own decks, but I never stick to them. Just using the bunpro decks is a no brainer that makes vocab learning easy without having to think about what to add. I only know a bit more than 1000 words yet, so following any of those high frequency decks is already effective enough for me. I’ll get around to most words just by following premade decks. The only deck I’m making myself is my elementary school deck. Not sure, if I’m sticking to it with bunpro, though. Maybe if I could write my own vocab, but I found no option for that.

Maybe somebody knows a way to write my own vocab?

#45

Vocab is just huge, even with 10 000 vocab under your belt you would still find new words every day. And unknown vocab is more noticeable than unknown grammar (if you have a firm grasp up to an intermediate level). If it’s just for reading or watching you can mostly guess the intention even if you don’t know the grammar point, but a sentence with 3 unknown words in it and you are totally lost. Like a casual description of architectonical features or fashion choices could totally throw you off.

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#46

Yeah I feel the same way. Unknown vocab when listening throws me off and makes it hard to put effort into understanding review phrases here on Bunpro. So I’m trying to not rush grammar ahead of vocab (even though grammar “unlocks” understanding more)

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#47

That it is a horror :laughing: I appreciate getting exposure from another genre, and I find the story quite intense.

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#48

Oh I love this! I personally love journaling and writing about my life experiences and my studies. It’s really nice to look back on and see the progress. I’ve never thought about posting anything publicly about it though and I’m honestly tempted to make my own because of yours! Thank you for sharing. It’s interesting to see how everyone tackles learning a language.
Keep up the hard work! お疲れ様です。

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#49

haha, thanks for the heads up, horror is really not my genre. I just thought the cover looked cute. But now I looked at the (spoiler) tags on natively and… I will not add this anytime soon :sweat_smile: Maybe on a hot summer day, when I need something to cool me down.

#50

Posting a personal log can be a fun thing :slight_smile: Even if you just ramble about random things like I do :sweat_smile: Most of the other logs I read had all these stats and lists and almost looked professional, so I was unsure if I can just post plain text with my thoughts.

It turned out a log can be anything you want to. For me it’s a place where I can just dump whatever is currently on my mind, which feels kinda liberating to me. I love to try lots of different things on my language journey, to find the things that gives me the most joy. But that means I also drop a lot of stuff I tried, cause I’m not enjoying them. Posting about dropping things actually helps me to not feel this slight pang of guilt.

So I encourage you to try a log. Maybe it’s fun, maybe you have a nice conversation, maybe you’ll look back on it in a few years :slight_smile:

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#51

I think mine would be quite the ramble lol. But I think it could be fun and would at least be something I could look back on in the future. I do worry about just falling off the habit of updating it, but we’ll see what happens. :blush:

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#52

Well, no study log is forever, it’s only natural to fall off the habit, maybe coming back and then stop updating again. I hope your log will provide you with good things :slight_smile:

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#53

I just fell in love with the cram function. “cram” that always sounded like intense, binge studying, the kind of learning that clashes with slow and cozy, so I never even looked. But there is a bunch of options! Just putting all of my beginner stage items and the few troubled ones in there, set it to flashcard style and just do a quick five minute review with about 20 items.

It’s perfect for new vocab, so I see them a bit more often during their first day :slight_smile: Completely new vocab always had the worst retention for me, but with the cram function, they sink in better :slight_smile:

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#54

I already mentioned it in other topics, but here is another way to use the Cram function:

Whenever you are learning new grammar, if it is a point that would benefit from cramming (like a conjugation), I add it to a personal deck called “Confusing grammar”. Then, I will cram that deck whenever I have some free time. This way you don’t have to bother with what to add to the cram session. Every once in a while, I go through the deck and delete the points that I am feeling ok with.

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#55

I noticed a “bookmarked vocab” field, too! I think bookmarking troublesome vocab or grammar will replace making ghosts for me :slight_smile: There are so many useful settings in the cram function. I just slept on it due to the uncozy name :sweat_smile:

#56

Good news! I got gifted an old laptop and managed to install a subtitle plugin :slight_smile: While I don’t intend on mining anything anytime soon, I noticed it comes with an easy set up if I ever decide to do so (but probably only after I finished N1 vocab, so maybe in a few years).

Now I can watch wonderful precure with japanese subtitles and I instantly noticed I recognized more words. Especially the ones that are still kinda new or hard for me, now get recognized better when I can also read them. :slight_smile: It takes away a bit of the fun, though. I enjoyed to finally not be reading (english) subtitles anymore and be able to just fully engage with the visuals. Well, only a few more years to go ^^

#57

If you are a speedrunner your are cooked :slightly_smiling_face:

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#58

@JessieTora be very careful with this approach. I did the same thing, but one too many times without the VPN, and they’ll put your account in lockdown mode basically requiring you to submit proof of address. I lost all my Kindle books this way. Luckily I kept my Kindle offline after the ban, so I’m still able to read my books, but be warned this is a risky strategy especially if you sink any money into the books

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#59

Thanks for the heads up! We’re living in strange times, being mostly global and all, but digital books (and other things) not being available in all countries for no good reason.

In the beginning I used to buy my books on bookwalker and screenshot every page to make a pdf, since the app doesn’t allow handwriting notes. So many weird formats, limits and stuff on digital media.

I would prefer physical books, but those are even harder to come by and cost more, which is both understandable. It’s a rare chance to find a whole series I want to read in used but affordable condition.

#60

Yeah, I think more so than other languages, japanese draws in the speedrunners AND the optimized learning crowd (and a lot of tech-affine folks, too). And it seems like those two groups are constantly clashing. I really don’t get why the “do only a bit every day or you WILL BURN OUT” people have the need to constantly state their opinions on speedrunner logs. I would love to read the speedrunner logs and be happy for them, but all this negativity and talking other people down really gets on my nerves. This has to be really harsh on the speedrunners motivation, too. How are you feeling about those comments?

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