#Mejo me

[mejomonster]

I dyed and cut my hair babyyyyy 💙💙💙

[deathshallbenomore]

⚡️

[tortademaracuya]

No hice un carajo y no me sale un carajo, que magoya vaya a corregir mañana

[rigelmejo]

Comprehensible Input Study Plans

If anyone would like to go on a Comprehensible Input/Automatic Language Acquisition/Direct Method journey with me, I have got a list of resources for you! This list is basically going to be: if I was studying a language primarily through comprehensible input, this is the resources I would try in roughly this order.

Japanese:

1. Glossika Japanese Old audio course. Teaches approximately 2000-3000 words (the course has around 3000 sentences but I think some sentences have no new words). Course seems to be a few hundred hours (150-300 hours I'm going to estimate), and lets say 300-600 hours if you repeat audio files to re-listen and study. This is "audio flashcards" materials so sentences are given in japanese then english then japanese. They are "comprehensible input" in that you can completely understand the sentences, but they do teach using english. Also, Glossika courses are easier if you have some basic grammar knowledge first as the course does not explain word order, verb endings, conjugations, particles etc.

2. Comprehensible Japanese youtube channel. If you are a total beginner, I would recommend this resource first and go through a LOT of the material. Then use something like Glossika Japanese old audio courses, some japanese anki sentences deck's audio files, some textbook with a few thousand word's audio files, to study 2000-3000 common words.

3. ***While doing step 1 and 2, I would recommend beginning study of the writing system. Look up some app for "learn hiragana and katakana mnemonics" and study for a few weeks until you're roughly familiar with hiragana and katakana, as afterward you will read them so much you'll learn them more firmly. Look up japanese kanji radicals and read through a table, it should take a few hours or less. Understand that all kanji are built with those radicals (so maybe think of radicals as letters and kanji as the 'word' piece). Learn that kana (hiragana and katakana) stand for syllables, and have no meaning besides sound. Anything can be spelled with kana. Hiragana are usually for japanese words, particles, and conjugation. Katakana are usually for foreign words. Kanji are symbols that stand for a word (or a piece of a word like "airport" is air-port, 2 kanji may build a word). Kanji have various pronunciations depending on the word they are building. Hiragana often attach to the end of kanji words to spell out the conjugations. Look up "mnemonics" if you've never used them before so you can learn how to use them: they are stories you make up to help remember the pronunciation, meaning, or 'radical building blocks' of a new word. For studying kanji there are many options, I personally recommend finding one that includes mnemonics. As a total beginner I recommend: Learn Japanese Today by Len Walsh. It is easy to read in a couple weeks, it's mnemonics/explanations include pronunciation and meaning, it's a good introduction and you can find it free in a ton of libraries/e-libraries. I also recommend the books on japaneseaudiolessons.com if you want mnemonics provided for meaning AND pronunciations, and reading practice, but be aware they are in depth and dense reads. Many people will recommend Heisig Remember the Kanji... and I recommend it with one caveat: do NOT wait to continue your studies until you finish Heisig. If you use Heisig's book, keep studying japanese with other materials at the same time. I wasted 2 years on Heisig's books because they didn't include any actual pronunciations or vocabulary, so I waited to learn real words. You should start learning new words ASAP. I personally recommend you look up what mnemonics are, look up kanji radicals and practice making up some stories to remember them, then start learning real words and making up mnemonics to remember the new kanji words as you learn them (or going to kanji.koohi.com and using someone else's mnemonics story to remember). Mejo's bare minimum advice: read an explanation on radicals (2 hours), read an article explaining japan's writing system (2 hours), cram through a hiragana katakana free mnemonics app with quizzes for 2 weeks, look up mnemonics for kanji and learn how to make the mnemonic stories yourself, cram through Read Japanese Today for 2 weeks, proceed to learn kanji as part of words normally. If you are struggling a lot with remembering kanji words or written words in general, I recommend you check out the "SRS" section further down.

4. Look up a pronunciation guide, on youtube or any site with audio. Listen to it, should take a few hours. This is just to help you get used to the syllables and features you'll hear. You may want to hear some explanations of pitch tone at this point. I'll be real with you: I'm intermediate and still don't really understand pitch tone much. So I figure the sooner you hear about it, the more time you'll have to start figuring it out than I did. My obviously amateur advice (but it worked for me): do your best to pronounce new words the way they sound in japanese (sort of the way English puts stress on words "BLACKbird, old-FASHioned, underSTAND"). Try your best to pronounce as you hear the word, and move on. If you notice later you're making errors, correct them then. As a beginner, do not PAUSE your learning out of fear you will make mistakes or miss something. I feel that can be one of the biggest hurdles in learning a language: dwelling on how to perfectly do something before moving on, and so you never move on, and never learn more. It's better to move forward and learn new things everyday then to HALT all progress out of fear you're doing something imperfectly. So yeah... be aware of features like pitch tone, but also understand it's okay if it takes you a while to hear it, to understand what it means, to correct your mistakes. And this applies to anything in language learning.

5. Japanese Graded Readers: you can search the web for graded readers of various levels. I would recommend starting with the free Tofugu graded readers (they can be found here). The Tofugu books are very easy to start, make sense from context, and can help you feel much more comfortable reading in japanese. If you would like a more textbook approach, I like the following two books: Reading Japanese by Eleanor Harz Jorden and Hamako Ito Chaplin (this book goes slow and very in depth if you want a lot of beginner reading practice), A Japanese Reader: Graded Lessons for Mastering the Written Language (Tuttle Language Library) by Roy Andrew Miller (this book goes fast and it's dense but it will prepare you for reading newspapers and literature). White Rabbit Press has some graded readers. Satori Reader app I highly recommend from early-beginner to intermediate but not ready for real novels yet.

6. Immersion with material for native speakers! Get yourself a translator app downloaded on your phone (I like imabi and while it's subpar I like Google Translate to quickly speak in new words when I'm watching anime). Get an on screen reader OCR translation app if you plan to read a lot of manga (I use Ichigo Manga Translator because it's free). Bilingualmanga.net is a good place to start if you want to read manga, they provide english translations of the japanese and you can copy/paste the japanese text into translator apps. Animelon.com has dual subtitles and click-word lookup if you like watching anime. Parallel translations of books app by Kursx is great for reading novels (it has Text To Speech, click translations of words, parallel translations of sentences) you will need to import txt/epub files if you use this app (annas-archive.org is a good place to find those). If you already have a favorite eReader app (I use Moon+ Reader) then know that most reader apps already have built in click-translation features and text to speech audio. If you use Kindle, kindle has click translations (and if you use Android Talkback accessibility tool it will text-to-speech read kindle books aloud). Amazon Kindle app is probably the easiest place to purchase japanese ebooks and manga. I highly recommend when you start immersion: start with easier materials where you understand the main idea of scenes without word lookups or with minimal keyword lookups. So materials you've seen/read before, slice of life daily stuff where most words are common etc. Also I recommend always watching/reading in japanese primarily before turning on things like dual subtitles or parallel translations: basically at least TRY to understand the japanese before leaning on another language. You want to get used to being primarily in japanese.

7. ***A note on SRS: I go through this more down below in the Chinese section, so please skip down to that. In short: SRS can be a great way to push through that "beginner hump" where you feel you will never learn the language, ASAP. At least, if you can get yourself to reliably do 30 minutes+ per day of SRS regularly. My suggestion for you if you're struggling to go from study materials, to immersion in content for native speakers? Pick SOME SRS study resource for japanese that teaches 2000 words or more. Start it and focus on studying new materials, review OPTIONAL only if you completed 1 or more new sections per day (so study at least 20+ new words per day before doing reviews, cut reviews if you have limited study time). If you're a crammer like me, do 50-200 new words/sentences per day and only review if you have time after that. It should take you approximately 4 weeks on a cram schedule (so 1-2 hours of study per day) to study 2000 words. After that, you can do reviews for another 1-2 months if you want of the 2000 words OR you can jump directly into immersion at that point. That plan will get you from upper-beginner (you know 500-1000 words from comprehensible input, graded readers, audio flashcards, but immersion feels exhausting and you can't understand anything) who just CANNOT handle any immersion, to able to study from immersion primarily, in about 1-3 months. Yes it's 1-3 months of studying 1+ hour a day in flashcards... so you need to be able to concentrate on getting through flashcards. But it will push you over the hump. This is what I did after 2 years of japanese study where I knew 500-1000 words and felt hopeless as an "eternal beginner": I crammed through 2000 cards of Nukemarine's Lets Learn Japanese memrise decks for 3 months. Then I tried to read manga and lookup words: to my surprise I could actually follow a manga plot main idea by just looking up some keywords! I tried playing Kingdom Hearts: and likewise realized I could now play with just some keyword lookups here and there every 3-5 minutes (given I was already familiar with the english version of the game). It made immersion possible for me to do. Once immersion was possible, I continued reviews by immersing and seeing words I'd studied before, and continued learning by guessing new words from context in immersion and looking up words every 5ish minutes or when they looked like key words for main idea understanding. I personally recommend Nukemarine's Lets Learn Japanese SRS decks, as I feel getting through parts 1-6 will make immersion possible (that's what i did) and then the other parts are well structured to help you get the words needed to read novels/watch more complex shows. Nukemarine's decks also has combine sentences, audio and text, new vocabulary, kanji, and grammar points. So if you only have 1 resource you use? It covers the key areas. If you like another SRS course more, use that instead. The main thing is find something teaching AT LEAST 2000 words and get through studying NEW words quickly. Part of the eternal "beginner hump" is people thinking japanese is hard, and taking years studying 300 kanji or 500 words, when the sooner they increase vocabulary the sooner immersion material will become accessible.

(Fun little things: Genki textbooks cover vocabulary immensely slowly in my opinion and I wish each book had at least 2000 words, since they're meant to cover 1 year in college each and typical language introduction books for OTHER languages usually cover 2000 words at minimum... which is doubly annoying because with few cognates, you need more basic vocabulary in japanese to start reading/watching compared to a language like French where with 500 common words and cognates to rely on you can start reading nonfiction...which is what I did. Whereas I NEEDED at least 1000 japanese vocabulary words to start reading anything in japanese. Be aware that a lot of japanese learner material is paced slower than some other languages - like french and spanish - because the writer thinks it's more difficult. the problem is... the lower amount of content per chapter/lesson means less learned per minute... and then japanese is going to take thousands of hours more to learn than a similar language to yours already, so slow learning material is extra frustrating to me. When you run into learning material that presents information slowly? Either find a different learning material, or push through it faster than the learning material recommends. Since Genki 1 and 2 only teach 1700 total... I'd suggest getting through both textbooks in under a year, at least studying their vocabulary sections in under a year. Or get a 2000+ word anki deck and get through it in 3 months lol. A typical Teach Yourself introduction book teaches 2000 words, and certainly expects the student to learn those words at least vaguely in under a year. So personally... I think it's a good idea to push yourself to learn at least that many words in japanese ASAP. If you're a beginner, aim for 1 year (and if it takes longer for some reason that's okay). If you've been studying japanese for years, like I was, and still stuck in the beginner rut? Cram 2000 common words NOW. Go find a word list, an SRS anki deck, get glossika japanese audio files, Something, and get vaguely familiar with a few thousand common words now. Aim to get through the words in 4 months or less, then start immersing (or start intermediate level textbooks/courses if you prefer studying that way, or both).

Chinese:

1. Go through a pronunciation guide (2 weeks or less) like the dongchinese one here. Anything with audio. Look up tone explanation guides on youtube, including on tone sandhi, and then look up a few tone trainer quizzes online and do them every once in a while. All of pronunciation beginner study may take 1 month or less. You're getting used to hearing tones, recognizing tones, recognizing language features, and getting used to pinyin pronunciation.

2. Look up how the chinese writing system works. This may take a few hours to a week. Read a few articles that explain hanzi, that explain and show a table of the radicals and how they combine to build hanzi, how often a hanzi is built of a pronunciation component and meaning component from radicals. The main thing is to learn that hanzi usually are pronounced one way, are a piece of a word (or whole word), and a limited amount of radicals build hanzi (sort of like letters build to make a word). Understanding radicals build hanzi will help you break down new hanzi you see into recognizable radical components. Look up mnemonics if you've never used them before: they are stories you make up to help remember a word or hanzi's meaning, pronunciation, and radicals. Mnemonics can be useful later when learning hanzi, so it's important to know how to make them yourself if you want to use mnemonics later.

3. Hanzi study: you will do this alongside whatever else you do early on. You can use anki flashcard decks for studying hanzi (I recommend searching "chinese hanzi mnemonics anki deck" or "chinese hanzi mnemonics memrise" or whatever app you use with "mnemonics"). I personally mostly relied on a book which had pre-made mnemonics for 800 hanzi, and it gave me a solid foundation. (My FAVORITE chinese study book, it indirectly is also how kanji in japanese got eons easier for me, I love it intensely more than Heisig lol: Tuttle Learning Chinese Characters: (HSK Levels 1 -3) A Revolutionary New Way to Learn and Remember the 800 Most Basic Chinese Characters). I simply read through the book for 2 months. After that I just learned new words regularly (through comprehensible input, graded readers, SRS decks of common words/sentences), and made up my own mnemonic stories when I had a hard time remembering a new hanzi. I recommend that if possible you find a hanzi resource that provides pronunciation, meaning, and example words. And that the resource includes mnemonics if they help you remember things better. I recommend using an SRS program if you like using SRS apps, and if that study method works well for you. You will likely be studying hanzi or words with a focus on remembering their hanzi for at least 6 months, possibly 1-2 years, so it's okay to take 1-2 months to search for resources and then decide on using something you really like using. I also recommend getting a hanzi resource that teaches AT LEAST 2000 hanzi, ideally all hanzi on the HSK (but the HSK recently changed so just do the best you can), and at minimum you're going to want to learn around 1000 hanzi (roughly the amount on HSK 4 which is when immersion starts to feel possible). The exception: the book I heavily relied on only taught 800 hanzi, but it gave me a strategy to further study new hanzi as I encountered them later in words... so that book in combination with any vocabulary resource and you should smoothly be able to learn over 1000 hanzi in the first 6 months. I learned about 2000 hanzi in the first 6 months using that book for 800, and then Ben Whatley 1000 Common Chinese Words and Ben Whatley 2000 Common Chinese Words in memrise. It personally helped me to learn a majority of hanzi in the context of words. The memrise decks I spent 4 weeks cramming through, then continued reviewing the words by running into them during immersion. Alternatives: Chinese Spoonfed Anki deck has words in sentences, theres a LOT of anki decks specifically for learning hanzi with mnemonics and I think all are fine if they have audio pronunciation and meaning (and ideally example words).

4. ***Optional: read through a grammar guide summary. This is not part of comprehensible input method, but I did it and it helped me so I figured I'd mention it. I simply read through all the lessons on this site (without doing the exercises) and it took me about 3 weeks.

5. Start Comprehensible Input learning materials. You can start immediately, or after 1-2 months of preparing with the materials above. Comprehensible Chinese is a good youtube channel to start with.

6. Graded Readers. These can be started soon after starting to learn new words with comprehensible input lessons (like Comprehensible Chinese youtube). Mandarin Companion graded readers start at only 50 words so a total beginner could start there, then just gradually read the higher level graded readers until you are reading the highest unique word count graded readers Mandarin Companion has. After that, I recommend downloading Pleco app (***which you will use a lot for other things too), and browsing the graded readers offered for sale on Pleco. They're often 2 dollars for individual stories to 20 dollars for collections of stories/long stories, and reading them in Pleco you have click-translations, text to speech, extensive dictionary entries, and mtl parallel text translations of passages. Some of the graded readers you can buy on Pleco go up to 2000+ unique words, after which you are certainly ready to move to immersion with novels for native speakers. If you want to move to immersion ASAP, I would recommend using graded readers that go up to 800-1500 unique words (I used Mandarin Companion 800 word graded readers and Sinolingua 1500 word graded readers) then going to Heavenly Companion's site (*more details later) and starting with novels for native speakers that start at 1000-1500 unique words.

7. Aim for trying to learn 3000 common words (you can aim for at least 1000 if you're desperate to move on to immersion). Glossika Chinese old course audio is an audio flashcard option to learn 2000-3000 words (audio flashcards teach with chinese sentences then english translation so you can comprehend what is said). The sentences are around 300 hours, then more hourse depending on how much you re-listen to study. Chinese Spoonfed Anki audio files are another good option (have around 7000 sentences, 19 hours, I imagine the sentences teach at least 4000 words). You could use these kinds of resources as a supplement to Comprehensible Input youtube videos and Graded Readers, to keep growing your vocabulary and reviewing things you've learned. (You may have noticed at this point, I'm offering 3 lesson options: videos on youtube, audio flashcards, and graded readers. Depending on the study activity you like best, you may find yourself relying more heavily on one of these 3 and that's fine. Just aim to keep increasing your vocabulary no matter what you rely more on - so if you use youtube videos be aware you may need supplemental vocabulary exposure, and aim to get some listening AND reading practice - so if you use audio flashcards primarily then try to get some transcripts and read along occasionally or anki/memrise companion flashcards to read or turn on chinese subtitles on Comprehensible Chinese when you do occassionally do a video instead of audio flashcards. If you read graded readers mostly, try to listen along to the audiobook or text-to-speech sometimes so you get some listening practice).

8. ***Optional: SRS. Spaced Repetition Study. I did not use SRS much, but I did cram study this way for around 4 weeks in the first 6 months of studying chinese, because it really helped me get vague recognition of 2000 common words in written form ASAP. If you can focus on flashcards/flashcard apps for 30 minutes to 1 hour regularly, this is possibly the fastest way to get vaguely familiar with new vocabulary so you can make immersion doable and easier ASAP. For japanese and chinese in particular, SRS may be the route to go if you feel you "cannot get over the beginner hump." If you are not using graded readers much, you may need some kind of SRS study to get reading practice in and review of written form of words. (You can actually do SRS study with paper flashcards you make or a printed out wordlist you read through or a wordlist website you have open on the computer, all SRS really is amounts to studying the least amount of repetitions you'd need to review information right before you forget it... something like study today, then tomorrow, then in 3 days, then in 1 week, then in 2 weeks, then in a month, then in 2 months, then in 4 months etc). I recommend Chinese Spoonfed Anki deck for chinese since it's got thousands of words, grammar examples, audio, text, and it's a solid foundation to jump to immersion from. I used "2000 common HSK words" deck on memrise, it had no sentences, just audio and text, it worked fine for me and took 1 month to cram through. This is my advice for people who want to get over the endless "beginner hump" or who like me want to immerse ASAP and get past learner materials. It can also be found up in the japanese section. Cram! If you've done hundreds of hours listening to Comprehensible Chinese, audio flashcards, and reading graded readers, but still find immersion too hard or still find you have not learned over 1000 words? Or find you're really struggling with hanzi recognition? Look up an SRS app like anki or memrise, look up an SRS course (again I'd say just use anything with 2000+ words and audio and text, like Chinese Spoonfed anki deck). Do the SRS app 1-2 hours a day for 2 weeks, prioritizing studying 50-200 new words per day. Only do reviews if you have time at the end, after getting through your 50-200 new words goal daily. At the end of 2 weeks you'll het through 1000 words, then spend 2 weeks getting through the backlog of reviews. Then for 2 weeks go through 50-200 new words daily again, 1-2 hours per day, skip reviews unless you have time. After those 2 weeks you'll have gotten through all 2000 words. Take another 2 weeks to do reviews now if you wish (or just skip it). It will take approximately 1-3 months to get through 2000 common words and have a vague familiarity with them. At that point, you can start immersing and stop SRS app usage (unless you like SRS apps, in which case you might want to transition to 10-30 minutes daily with 5-20 new words daily and no more so you don't get overwhelmed). This is how I get vague familiarity with a few thousand common words ASAP. Once there's vague familiarity, when you immerse you might look up those words and 'review' them a few more times by looking them up until they stick in your memory, but they won't be totally unfamiliar. And you will NEED them to understand the immersion content, so your brain will try to remember them quickly since they're needed daily and used daily in immersion. The SRS apps also work well for drilling hanzi when you're trying to learn the first 1000 common hanzi or so. If you find nothing else is helping you get vaguely familiar with hanzi recognition, try an SRS app of 2000+ common hanzi with mnemonics for a couple months.

(***A small warning: a lot of apps "use SRS for their study cards" but how fast you go through new words depends on the app. If you're trying to get vague familiarity with a lot of words quickly, either pick an app that doesn't take you more than 1 hour to get through 50+ words, OR honestly pick a regular word list or a bare bones Anki deck where you know you can easily read through 100 words in 1 hour). One thing that slowed me down a LOT is apps where I'd see 20 new words an hour... I could watch literally any show as a beginner and get exposed to 20 new words in less time. I try to avoid picking resources that slow down my exposure to stuff to learn.

9. Immersion time! If you're extremely tolerant of ambiguity and/or like looking words up, you can immerse as SOON as you can follow the main idea of a scene with just the help of looking up 1-2 keywords for meaning per scene (or without looking up anything). Think about how you felt when reading your first Graded Reader: it probably had more words than you actually knew yet, so it felt HARD, but you could at least follow the main idea of what was going on. And if you couldn't follow the main idea, you could get by on just looking up 1-5 unknown words per page to understand the main idea. And by the end of the graded reader, you didn't need to look up any words to grasp the main idea. If it was a rather easy graded reader, you might even have understood almost everything including most details without any word lookups by the end of the book. That's the feeling you want to get with your immersion materials, at least ideally. And after a few months of immersion, once you've learned more words and gotten comfortable "understanding what you already studied" then some easier immersion materials should feel like a graded reader used to feel. The first few months of immersion I'd recommend picking easier material: shows/books with few unique words (ideally less unique words than you know so if you know 2000 words then picking a kid's book with 1000 unique words), shows you've seen before in your native language (so you can guess what the words mean because you know what happens in those scenes), books based on shows you've seen, books for kids, reading summaries before watching/reading something (so you have prior context to guess what words mean because you know what should be happening). At first, you will have to learn how to "understand what you already studied" so you'll be practicing understanding words you know at speaking speed, in the grammar of actual sentences, reading words you maybe haven't read much, listening to words you maybe haven't listened to much, getting used to accents and emotion and background noise, getting used to understanding stuff you've studied QUICKLY because its all so much quicker than in learning materials. It will feel hard, stick with it for a few months, and eventually you can tolerate immersing for longer time periods and get better at immediately understanding stuff you already studied. At that point, you can gradually start picking more difficult and challenging immersion material.

***If you find immersion INTENSELY difficult and you can NOT understand the main idea, even when you look up key words, or you notice you need to look up like 20 key words per 5 minutes to even guess the main idea? Even after a few months of trying to immerse and see if it gets easier? You may benefit from going to study more words. If you don't like ambiguity and get frustrated by only vaguely understanding things, you'll probably be the kind of person who prefers to study more words BEFORE immersing. I would recommend a. cram studying 2000-3000 words in some SRS app or audio flashcard course like glossika (and if you have time and energy you may even wish to cram study 5000-7000 words... but if it's been over 5 months, you may just be avoiding immersion and hoping Ever More Vocabulary will make it easier... it won't at a certain point. You have to practice immersion eventually for immersion to get easier). b. Reading a LOT of graded readers. Graded readers will feel the most like immersion, because they force you to read a LOT all in the target language. Read increasingly difficult graded readers, so for chinese this is where you'd read 5+ 2000 word graded readers. Practice reading graded readers without relying on word lookups and attempt to grasp the meaning from context, so you can practice skills you'll need in immersion in an easier enviornment. Try to read graded readers through multiple times, attempting to read FASTER the second and third times, to practice comprehending things you have learned faster... this skill is needed for immersion, and practicing it now will make immersion easier. Listen to audiobooks/text to speech OF graded readers, and listen repeatedly until you comprehend most of what you hear. Graded readers in particular will help you both increase vocabulary AND develop the skills you'll be using and relying on a lot in immersion like: learning new words from context, parsing sentences, following audio at spoken speed (if reading along to an audiobook), getting a feel for how difficult a material is to you and if you personally can comprehend enough to learn new words from context alone or if you personally need to look up some key words (and how to identify key words for understanding quickly then move on), being engaged with only the target language for several minutes to an hour without much of another language to rely on.

For chinese, I recommend the Heavenly Path site to find immersion materials if you don't know where to start. You can start with their stuff recommended "Newcomer" with immersion materials that are around unique word counts of 1000, so they should be the most easy to transition into after doing some graded readers and studying 1000-3000 words. In particular I recommed starting with 秃秃大王 if you can read an 800 unique word Mandarin Companion graded reader, or a 1000-2000 unique word sinolingua graded reader. It is excellent for a beginner, it's not too long so you'll be able to finish it in a few days to a month (I think it took me 3 weeks of 30 minutes per day). After 秃秃大王, the other Newcomer recommendations should feel doable to you, and then from there just progressively pick slightly harder novels with slightly higher unique word counts when you're no longer running into as many new words as you wish to. Apps like Pleco (in free version you can copy-paste text into it's Clipboard Reader section, in paid you can import files) and Readibu (copy-paste in a website page to read the webnovel in the app, or find webnovels in Readibu's recommendations) let you read webnovels and click-translate words. Pleco has a ton of other features (and is a great free dictionary app so I suggest downloading it). Parallel translations of books app by Kursx is another good app for reading chinese novels, you'll need to import the novel files though. All reader apps have click-translate and text to speech tools like Moon+ Reader, Kindle, Kybook Reader, so if you have a favorite eReader app you can probably just open chinese epubs or txt files in your preferred app. I use Microsoft Edge for nothing else, but its Read Along tool has the most natural sounding text to speech I've ever heard, if you want to listen to text as you read. All web browsers have click-translate tools (sometimes you need Google Translate installed as an app on your phone, then just hold down any word/sentence you want a translation of when on a web browser and you'll have a Translate option). So honestly, any web browser and webnovel link and you'll be all set to read with click-translations and text to speech. If you like manhua, Bilibili Comics app has english and chinese versions of comics so you can read manhua in chinese, then read the english versions if you want to look up a particular word or check your understanding of the plot. If you like shows, youtube has a ton of free cdramas, often with chinese subtitles, so you can pause shows to see words and then go to a translation app of your choice (Pleco, DeepL, BaiduTranslate, Google Translate) and look up words. LingoTube is a free app where you can open youtube videos and get dual subtitles, audio line replay, click-translations of words.

[al-sapore-di-sigarette]

"[...], me fa pensá che forse... Forse se nessuno me guarda in faccia me dovrei fà 'na domanda. Forse è mejo se m'ammazzo, così smetto de gravà sulle spalle de tutti quelli che me s'avvicinano, perché tanto er futuro mio è questo, no? Campà de stenti, incazzato cor mondo, inaffidabile, paranoico e più andrò avanti e più ce starò male. So' stanco de esse' 'ncazzato, me toje tutte l' energie che c'ho."

L'estate dei bravi ragazzi — Camilla Graciotti

[lucientelrunya]

Fic authors self rec! When you get this, reply with your favorite five fics that you've written, then pass on to at least five other writers. Spread the self-love ❤

Awww thank you for thinking of me <3

I don't know if I can name 5 fics, because two of my most favorite fics I've written are unfinished and therefore unpublished. But from the ones I've published so far, I'd say:

Like a lonely house, a DMBJ fic and of course Zhang Rishan/Qi Tiezui because I can't write anything else in this fandom. It was the first fic I wrote and finished after not having written for quite a while and it's still my favorite one, I love rereading it.

And the gentleness that comes, not from the absence of violence, but despite the abundance of it, also DMBJ but a merpeople-AU, again fuba. There is so much lore in this one that I absolutely love and I definitely want to write a part 2. This wouldn't exist without @sunriseverse entertaining my crazy ideas, so thank you, dear!!

And lastly We go deeper than the ink beneath the skin of our tattoos, DMBJ again but there isn't really a romantic pairing, just Zhang Rishan and his endless devotion to Fo Ye and the things he is willing to risk for him. Mostly his own life, of course.

Thank you again, mejo, this was just what I needed :)

[elperegrinodedios]

Pensieri in cammino...

Oggi sta cosi e nun ce se pò parla', è incazzato! È mejo lasciallo perde' eh?

Io ero venuto a salutallo e chideje un consijo, ma me sa tanto che nun è aria e che è mejo che torno 'n'artra vorta. Pure si 'na risposta già me l'ha data. Guardo il tempo e la fuori c'è guerra muoiono molti innocenti, e non si può restare insensibili, forse è cosi che stai anche tu. Ciao, grazie amico mio.

#elperegrinodedios

[byneddiedingo]

Terence Stamp in Teorema (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1968)

Cast: Terence Stamp, Silvana Mangano, Massimo Girotti, Anne Wiazemsky, Laura Betti, Andréa José Cruz Soublette, Ninetto Davoli, Carlo De Mejo, Adele Cambria, Luigi Barbini, Giovanni Ivan Scratuglia, Alfonso Gatto. Screenplay: Pier Paolo Pasolino. Cinematography: Giuseppe Ruzzolini. Production design: Luciano Puccini. Film editing: Nino Baragli. Music: Ennio Morricone. 

Is Pier Paolo Pasolini's Teorema artsy fiddle-faddle or a trenchant satire of the bourgeoisie? Yes. It's both. It's a heavy-footed Marxist diatribe and a beautiful display of cinematic technique. If ever a film was caviar to the general, it's Teorema. At this point, I want to recommend that anyone who subscribes to the Criterion Channel go watch Rachel Kushner's commentary on Teorema in her "Adventures in Moviegoing" collection. And if you don't (and even if you do), then read James Quant's essay on the film at the Criterion Collection site. Both of them suggest why Pasolini's film continues to awe and/or annoy viewers. There's a fine line between the pretentious and the provocative, and Teorema has continued to straddle it more than 60 years. For myself, I find it an immensely amusing film, which may be enough for me to recommend it to anyone who has a taste for caviar.  

[mejomonster]

Fic authors self rec! When you get this, reply with your favorite five fics that you've written, then pass on to at least five other writers (except me because obvs I have done it). Spread the self-love ❤

Okay so I wanted to answer this sooner but I wasn't on the computer until now ToT

What Makes Monsters Stop Devouring - Guardian, a Weilan and Kunlun/Ye Zun fic (and a bit of book/show fusion), Ye Zun and Shen Wei centric post-canon fix it fic where they all live and heal and continue forward. It's the longest thing I ever managed to write and finish, and it's really special to me for that. It took me multiple years to finish and it's what gave me the confidence to try writing more longer things ever since. Also it's my headcanon for if Guardian had a season 2 ToT I also just really liked the writing style I developed over time as I wrote it.

of a kind - Star Trek, Nyota Uhura/T'Pring, this story is so special to me. It came to my mind one day, word for word, and I managed to just write down what I'd thought of. I really like the simplicity of it, and the character's introspection. I wish I could write more things this short and close to how I picture.

What will they find when I am ripped apart - Star Trek AOS, Spirk, the title is a reference to a star trek poem. I never finished this story, and at this point I don't know if I ever will. But it was the first fanfiction I wrote after college, and really brought me back into reading fic and writing and how much I enjoyed it. So it's special in my heart for bringing me back to doing something I love. My writing style had changed drastically versus the older stuff I wrote, I got indulgent and wanted to sink into scenes like watching a movie play out and savoring the moments, starting with this, and my writing style has been more that way ever since.

where they belong - daomubiji, Wu Xie/Zhang Qiling, time travel, story playing out in 2 time periods, canon divergent or compliant if you stretch it, horror, romance, bittersweet, basically everything I love to write about the most. This is one of the fics that turned out just like I pictured in my head, I ended up loving the writing style and still wish I could hit that particular 'feel' again when writing.

just a ribbon - The Untamed, Lan Sizhui/Jin Ling and Jin Ling/Lan Jingyi but mostly about all of them caring about each other, one of the fluffier things I've written (but still bittersweet because I wrote it ToT). When I got back into writing I made some Star Trek stories, then took a break, then felt like writing again after seeing The Untamed. So a lot of The Untamed fics I wrote feel special to me, came along thanks to sudden inspiration and were a lot of fun to make. This one in particular always makes me smile and laugh when I reread it (I wrote a lot of SAD The Untamed fics), and I still have the notes for a sequel for this fic that I'd like to finish writing eventually.

[sambuchito]

Esta situación política es una mierda pero yo siento que es el momento para que la izquierda argentina se reorganice, agarre fuera y se aleje del peronismo. Porque algo que siempre hacen los gobiernos fachos el hacer que la izquierda se despierte.

yo la verdad estoy tan decepcionada de la izquierda como cualquier otro, espero que se sumen a una oposicion consolidada y se dejen de romper las bolas con su ideologia sin compromiso, porque no era lo mismo el voto en blanco o el voto de milei, al ser tan inflexibles nunca van a llegar a nada y termina ganando el sensacionalista. Espero que sirva para reforzar la lucha por nuestros derechos y nos movilice para llegar a algo mejo . Me da mucha bronca por los que sabiamos que podia pasar desde hace años y la verdad nunca me lo tome en joda

[pettirosso1959]

😂😂😂 STO RIDENDO DA UN'ORA:

Tema: racconta i tuoi giorni al mare

Isola Verde, 25 Giugno 2017.

OTTAVO GIORNO DI PRIGIONIA.

Cara maestra precaria,

le scrivo recluso dalla rulott dei nonni a Isola Verde.

Non so se ha presente cossa vol dire avere 8 anni e stare al mare coi nonni che ne hano rispetivamente 78 e 78.

Come molti veci, essi d'estate hano due obietivi nea vita: lamentarsi del caldo e ripararsi dal caldo.

I copulatori che mi generarono con atto sessuale circa 10 anni orsono (ciamarli genitori me vien nervoso), mi hanno cacciato qua dai veci dal 14 Giugno a no so quando!

Io qua passo le mie giornate tra la rulott del campeggio e quando che esco posso rivare fino al segno del quadrato del ombra dea tenda, parchè dopo ciappo il sole e secondo loro muoro.

Sono praticamente come un misto tra Dracula e un can ligà su un albaro.

Cara maestra precaria, par farle capire come che sono ciappato, eco le tape fondamentali dele mie giornate:

7.00 - sveglia e passeggiata al mare... “Fin che no riva el caldo”, dice la nonna.

7.15 - ritorno in casa parchè: “Taca essere soffego”, dice il nonno.

Nel tragitto, acquisto di un craff pa fare colassione. Sarà l’unica crema che vedarò su ste vacanse!

7.30 - la nonna chiede "Cossa magnemo uncò?".

Ma cane del porco, a devo oncora digerire il craff e hai già inamente cosa fare? Comunque dalle 7.40 la nonna taca spignattare!

Dale 8 ale 12.30 resto sul mio recinto a vardare staltri putelli che vanno al mare. Specialmente quelli di altre rasse tipo i tedeschi che essi del caldo non gliene ciava gnente, di mettersi le savatine sui cessi manco che manco, e di nascondersi fin che fanno pissin nella doccia del campeggio no ne parliamo!

12.30 – facio i conpiti.

12.31 – mi rompo i totani di fare i conpiti. Il nonno varda Studio Aperto e la giornalista ci avvisa che è caldo, che bisogna stare dentro. Grassie, mi mancava il colpo di grassia!

12.45 – pranzo sula veranda dela rulott.

Penso che al pranso della comunione i 112 invitati hano magnato manco! Dico che non ho più fame, ma la nonna risponde: “Magna che se no dopo me ciapo paroe da to mama!”

13.45 – riposino.

13.46 – mi sono roto i totani anca di stare in leto. Taco la Tv. Taco i videogiochi. Taco anch'io parchè sto sudando, parchè i veci no tacano l'aria condissionata parchè consuma.

"Nonna go tanto caldo. Tachiamo il clima?"

"No. Se te stè fermo te sopporti". Tu hai 78 anni stai ferma veciassa, io no ci riesso!

"Dopo te ciapi el coera e me ciapo paroe da to mama".

16.00 – ORARIO CHIAVE: LE QUATTRO! Ogni mamma del mondo dice che “AE QUATRO SE POE NDARE IN ACUA”!

Ma mia nonna è diversa: “Ae quatro se va magnare el gelato sfruttando ea linea de ombra dei alberi! Altro che mare, dopo te te brusi e me ciapo paroe da to mama”. E magna anca el gelato.

16.30 – la nonna dice: “Desso ndemo fare ea spesa, così al supermercato ze fresco”. I commessi del supermercato volliono adottarmi, stanno organisando di impinire di acqua la piscina in esposissione nel reparto giocattoli parchè gli faccio pecato.

18.45 – rientro a casa e preparassione del pesce fresco crompato al super. “Nonna chi ga da vegnere?”

“Soeo noialtri tre. Ma ze ben che te magni tanto pesse, se no dopo me ciapo paroe da to mama”.

19.45 – cena di pesse. Credo che solo oggi ho preso 8 Kg! Il costume no mi va altro bene, ma chi se ne ciava parchè tanto qua l’unica acqua che vedo è quella della doccia delle 20.30.

20.30 – doccia. Ogni sera. No sono mai stato così neto in vita mia!

21.00 – “Posso ndare fora adesso nonna?”

“Si... MA VIEN QUA CHE METEMO EA CREMA”.

“Ma nonna, è scuro ormai!”

“Tasi e metti ea crema se no dopo me ciapo paroe da to mama!”

21.10 – passeggiata lungomare. Par vendicarmi gli facio sputanare almanco 20 euro di giostre! Tiè veciassi!

22.00 – il nonno dice: “Te me pari stufo Toma, ndemo casa. Ze mejo che te dormi se no dopo se ciapemo paroe da to mama”.

22.30 – sono in leto de novo.

Insoma maestra, spero che quei due esseri umani che mi hanno trasmesso il loro dna difettoso (genitori cancari) vengano a tormi presto!

Mi sono frantumato i maronsini di stare qua.

Le chiedo di capire la situassione diffilce e veda di darmi almanco 8 su sto tema… se no dopo te te ciapi paroe da me mama!

Saluti.

Il prigioniero,

Toma Scantamburlo.

[sunb0rn]

gusto ko lang muna sabihin na, after almost 9 years, binalik na sa akin ni mamy yung (sahod) atm ko.

di ko alam if tmi ba ito pero kasi nabanggit ko naman na dito nang ilang beses na din that since things happened in 2014, hinayaan ko na sya muna maghawak ng sahod ko- pooled family expense and savings.

when people asks me kung mutual decision ba yon, sinasabi ko na oo kasi that time gulong gulo ako sa mga bagay.

2015, I started gradschool and for me okay nang sya yung nag aasikaso ng mga bayarin plus personal dues ko and ng family na din. nabanggit ko naman dito na when i started working (2011-2013) hindi sila nag aask ng share ko for anything. kahit mag offer ako tinatangihan nila kaya nakaka asar, feeling ko wala akong silbi. HAHAHA

happiness ko na non makapag grocery for myself (and for them kaunti- kasi areglado talaga sila when it comes sa pagkain at other necessities) ng mga items na dati nahihiya ako isama sa grocery list ng family.

going back sa kung mutual decision, di ko talaga matandaan na pinag usapan namin yon formally pero para sa akin yes naman talaga and for the deeper reason na yon yung time that i stopped living/my life stopped.

para saan pa na hahawakan ko pera ko eh hindi nga ako lumalabas except for work-school, tska kailangan kong ibawi ng ipon yung nawala sa akin eh.

but as years passed, say 2017 when I started a new job (Makati) dun ko ata simula naramdaman na ang hirap nung ganong set up. but never did I dare na bawiin kay mamy pera ko. ang dami kasing considerations eh. main reason is that i always felt bad and guilty with what happened three years prior.

i tried online selling in 2020, naexperience ko na ulit magkaroon kahit paano ng extrang hawak na pera. until 2021, 2022 came. for another post na ito. hahaha.

napahaba na yung post hahaha sabi ko gusto ko lang sabihin yung news kasi mejo dami ko gusto iunpack about it.

[killerandhealerqueen]

Fic authors self rec! When you get this, reply with your favorite five fics that you've written, then pass on to at least five other writers. Spread the self-love ❤

Oh, thank you Mejo! Okay, okay, five favorite fics...

1. Catch Me If You Can (F1 RPF, T, Loscar, 12.7k, detective/hitman au)

2. It's Not the Devil at Your Door (It's Just Your Shadow on the Floor) (F1 RPF, T, Lestappen, 10k, hero/villain + baby au)

3. Enough (Miami) (F1 RPF, M, Loscar, Lestappen, Carlando, 14.7k, mafia au)

4. 药剂师日记 | The Apothecary Diaries (Killer and Healer, T, Yuezhi, 89.3k, apothecary diaries au)

5. Monster Like Me (Killer and Healer, M, Yuezhi, 21.5k, mafia au)

[rigelmejo]

hey all! mejo back (after disappeared in the void for a while) with some language studying advice! (and as usual, take it or leave it, what works for one does necessarily work for another)

If you don’t know where to start, and you’re a beginner. I suggest: write down what you want to DO with the language. What do you want to be able to do in the language you decided to learn. This list will help you figure out your long term goals. Once you know your long term goals, you can figure out the shorter 1 month long and 6 month long to do in order to work toward those long term goals. And it’s okay to have 5 year and 10 year long term goals! It’s okay to aim for one thing now like “play my favorite video game in it’s original japanese” or “read my favorite author from the 1500s in the original language” or “be able to have a conversation about the current housing market,” and then later decide you’d also like to add “Be able to write a research paper without errors” or “be able to write a novel in my target language for teen reading level and above” or “be able to make youtube videos about my specific interests in the target language” or whatever.  My first long term goal with french was “learn to read enough to understand this book from the 1930s I found in a thrift store.” Then the next one was “be able to read these 1800s french history books I found that look interesting.” Then the next one is “learn to speak well enough to do job interviews” and I guarantee after that it will probably be “learn to write emails and essays without errors so I could feasibly work in french.” Just... really... setting long term goals will help so much, if you haven’t decided on any yet. First, if you write a goal you’re more likely to achieve it! Second, it’s a lot easier to figure out WHAT you need to study to “read X specific book with specific vocabulary” than it is to figure out what you need to study to “become fluent” and every vague thing that may entail. Even if your goal is “fluency” you need to know what that means to YOU. And what does it mean first, as in the first goals you’ll work on. Because your first goal is probably “have a conversation about my job and life and interests” before the later goal of “be able to discuss my tax bracket and explain to someone how to fill out this tax form.” (Unless you work as an interpreter for tax preparation, in which case you may well NEED to learn to explain taxes way before you learn how to say you did X as a kid and love to do Y hobby in your free time). Each goal will take some similar kinds of prep work as far as what you study, and some unique stuff you need to study. To accomplish both goals you need to learn a LOT of vocabulary, and grammar. But you’ll have to decide which vocabulary to learn first, which activities to practice doing first, and your long term goals you care about Right Now are the ones that will decide those things.

If you don’t know what study material to use, and I can’t emphasize this enough, please use a free one. And hey if you DO really like some paid resource? Buy one. Just one. And then use it until you have completed the entire thing. If you’re a perfectionist like me, or just indecisive, it’s easy to debate between 12 different paid learning programs and courses, or to buy several and finish using none. You can ignore this advice once you’ve gotten to say B1 (intermediate) level and have learned enough to figure out how you personally learn, what works for you, and what you need. But if you have no clue at all what you need in order to learn? Then just do something and STICK with it. Everything you need to learn a language already exists for free and is available. If you want a paid program that’s fine, it may be nice to follow a strict well designed course. Either way, just pick something and stick with it until it’s finished. Don’t spend $1000 on 5 different things. If you spend money later, once you’ve made progress, then you’ll have a good idea of WHAT study materials and study resource structures work well for you and you’ll be more likely to use those materials fully to make them worth the cost. I mean you can spend tons of money cause in the end do what you want. But if you want to succeed and make progress in learning a language, I promise even if you spend no money you can make as much progress as anyone else. So deciding to spend money once you know what you personally want and need could save some money, over spending right away before you’ve stuck with any study plan for several months and explored what works or doesn’t work for you.

You learn a language by simply: studying some NEW stuff regularly, and practicing the stuff you studied before. As long as you are regularly learning some new things, you will keep increasing your knowledge of the language, and you will make progress. For well rounded skills, you eventually want study all 4 areas reading, speaking, writing, reading. This will involve first, learning new stuff. So for example in reading it would involve learning new words regularly, and learning new grammar patterns. And second, reviewing that stuff by practicing understanding it. For reading that would involve reading stuff that uses words and grammar you studied. You’ll do this process, however you want (because there’s SO many ways to study and then practice), over and over. Your study plans will all boil down to doing this. Make sure you do a bit of both studying NEW things regularly, and practicing what you studied, and you’ll make good progress. For me I’ve noticed progress stall when I stop challenging myself and avoid learning NEW things, and I’ve seen some SRS anki lovers stall progress when they avoid practicing understanding things they studied (such as avoiding having conversations or avoiding reading). You can expose yourself to NEW stuff in a million ways, and practice in a million ways. If you use a textbook, then you might study new things by reading each new chapter and it’s new vocabulary list and grammar points. Then practice them by reading the excerpts, doing the conversational exercises with the vocabulary lists, and doing listening exercises with the words/grammar in the audio. If you use a tutor, then a tutor might regularly use new words and you ask “what does that word mean?” over and over, then you practice by using the word in your own sentences back to the tutor. If you use books, then you might look up new words every time you run into them, and practice understanding them each time you run into those words again. You can adapt to what’s enjoyable for you. So if you hate reading but like watching shows, you might do this with shows instead of reading materials. If you hate talking like with a tutor but like writing, then you might write journal entries and look up new words you want to be able to write about then practice writing with them. Now eventually, yeah, you’ll have to practice writing, reading, speaking, and listening if you want to be fluent in all 4 areas. But if your goal is “read this X novel” then you can cater your study plan to mostly reading activities for a while. 

As long as you’re regularly studying some new things, and practicing what you’ve studied before, then the biggest factor in progress will simply be hours you’ve studied. So the goal is to do whatever you can to study regularly, to add to the total amount of study time. One day, hundreds or thousands of hours later, you’ll be as fluent as you want. All you have to do is keep studying for enough hours, and you’ll reach your goals. So I suggest for your peace of mind, to stop caring what the “best” study method or resource is. I mean, look into it if you’re curious and interested in that kind of thing (I definitely am lol). But in the end, the best study methods/resources for you are WHATEVER you will KEEP doing. Learning a language is about studying consistently for enough hours to make the progress you want. So if you find a ‘great’ study method but you avoid doing it so you only do it 15 minutes once a week? It sucks. If you find a less popular study method, but you enjoy doing it and can easily do it 1 hour a day? Then it’s the best method FOR YOU. I know some people say they swear by textbooks, and textbooks DO work if you stick to them. But if you avoid them intensely then they won’t work for you. Some people LOVE SRS like anki, but if you avoid it or like me it takes 1 hour to study 10 little words? Then something else is going to suit you better. 

And again, regarding hours studied: you will not be fluent if you only study 100 hours in a year. Be realistic with yourself. Look up the “hours it will take to reach fluency” for your target language, you’ll find some estimates for how long it takes to reach roughly B2. Some are probably better or worse estimates. FSI’s estimates get thrown around a lot, and some people argue real language fluency takes 2 times as long as FSI gives since FSI assumes students study outside counted class hours. It doesn’t really matter too much for my point though. My general point is, if you’re an english speaker and study a language similar to english like French? Estimates tend to say 600 hours or more. If you’re an english speaker and study a language quite different from english like Chinese? Estimates tend to say 2200 hours or more. So what does this mean? It means if you’re studying a similar language, plan to spend hundreds of hours to see the progress you want. If you’re studying a language that’s quite different from what you already understand, plan to spend thousands of hours to see the progress you want. So if you’re an english speaker studying French do NOT feel bad if you spent 30 hours studying and still feel like a beginner, it’s normal! You may feel like a beginner for another few hundred hours, that’s okay, that’s normal. Make sure your expectations are reasonable. If you’re an english speaker and you’re studying japanese which is much different, don’t feel bad if you’ve spent 1000 hours studying the language and still can’t read a print novel! Or that novel is very slow to read through and requires you to constantly look up words. If you’ve only spent 600 hours on japanese, be nice to yourself if you still find trying to watch a show difficult! You’re a beginner in terms of hours studied! And then, on the flipside... if you studied French for say 500 hours and still struggle to follow a simple conversation on a tv show that’s like “I’m going to the store, do you want me to pick up anything for you? No that’s okay, have fun.” Then that’s a sign for you to focus on improving your listening skills, because they’re lower than you would probably expect them to be after 500 hours. Or that’s a sign you may need to change your study plan: perhaps (like me) you spent a lot of hours on reviewing stuff and very few hours on learning NEW stuff, and you need to alter that ratio a bit. The estimates might be very rough, but having a vague general idea of “its going to take me 800 hours to do what B2 (upper intermediate) scales say I should be able to” or “it’s going to take me 2000 hours” will help you manage your expectations and check your own progress is going how you want it to. If you’re learning japanese and only studying 1 hour a day, you have to be reasonable and understand it will take MORE YEARS to see progress than if you were studying french 1 hour per day. You’re not failing, you’re not necessarily doing anything wrong, it just takes more hours of japanese study to see equivalent amounts of progress you’d see in french. If you hate how many years its going to take, you can up your japanese study hours per day. But just know you are NOT failing or doing anything wrong if your japanese is still at a beginner level after 600 hours, when your french level was good enough to read novels at 600 hours. 

If you never made significant progress in studying a language before, then an initial hurdle may simply be figuring out how YOU learn a language. There’s many ways to figure out how you learn a language. I suggest you take a month or two and just search online about this and try out a few learning methods and figure out what works for you. For me, goal setting was a major thing that helps me learn. So for me I set some goal like “read a 300 unique word graded reader in chinese by month 3 (mandarin companion).” That was a clear short term goal that would work toward my long term goal of “be able to read webnovels.” That was a goal that would require a few study activities in 3 months: learning at least 300 common vocabulary words (and more if I can - I used some common chinese words memrise deck and cram studied, took about a month), learning some basic grammar (so reading some grammar guide summary online which i did for 2 weeks),  learn at least ~500 common hanzi (I found a book with hanzi and mnemonics and I’d read about a chapter a day and reread old chapters if I had time in a day, for a couple months). The first month I definitely spent most of it just looking up ways to learn hanzi, ways to study 500 words. I tried a word list (didn’t work for me), tried a few youtube lessons (too slow for me), tried a vocabulary book (too boring to focus on for me), and finally found what some guy did using memrise and copied him and just crammed (not the way memrise is supposed to be used lol) but cramming works for me. For hanzi I tried Heisig (did not work), tried anki (did not work for me), tried a different hanzi reference book (no mnemonics so didn’t work), then tried a book that had stories for hanzi meaning and pronunciation including tone ALL written so all i had to do was read a chapter for 1 hour every day and push through. That one worked. For grammar, I already knew I did well just reading through grammar guide summaries (from months of figuring out what worked back when I studied French). The second and third month, I stuck with the 3 things I’d found that worked. Then the third month, I tried to read the Graded Reader. I saw where I was successful, and where my skills were weak (things I’d need to add to studying in the future study plan). For me, taking a long term goal then figuring out a short term goal I can accomplish soon (or try to and see what aspects I didn’t work on well) helps me a lot. For me, I could break the short term goal down into specific study activities to prepare for it. Then I could try out the activities and see which worked and which didn’t (a lot did NOT work for me as you can see above). I do this process every time I make a short term study goal for the end of the month, except over time I clearly learned what works and does Not work for me. For example, one month I made a short term goal “do Listening Reading Method for a whole novel.” You might have seen my blog posts on that lol. I failed. I only got through 30 chapters instead of 106. I did not feel like doing the study activity daily, so some days I crammed 5 chapters then didn’t study again for a week. After a month, I learned that while I think Listening Reading Method is COOL, I just personally can not focus on it enough make it a regular study activity. I avoid it too much, which brings down my study time lower than if I’d spent the month doing stuff I could focus on easier (like watching a show or just reading on it’s own). And vice versa, sometimes I make a study plan like “listen to entire condensed audio of show this month, then see if at the end of this month a new audiobook chapter is easier for me to understand” and at the end of the month I realize I listened to 2 hours or more of audio a day, and easily fit it into my schedule. So maybe I learn “okay this study method is GREAT for me to do, I do it easily and I’ve made X progress and can understand a new audiobook chapter 30% more than I could before this month.” My point is... a lot of the hard work when you’re studying on your own is coming up with your own study plan and making sure it works for you, or changing it if the plan does not. You can avoid some of this hard work IF you use a pre-made study plan (like a textbook or college course, coursera free course, podcast, or even just copying the study resources and routine of someone else etc). But even if you use a pre made study plan, you’re probably going to have to try a few pre-made ones until one works well for you. So give yourself a couple months initially to just explore what’s working or not working for you. You want study activities you can do regularly (so not ones you avoid), that are exposing you regularly to new stuff to learn and practice of stuff you’ve studied, that are moving you closer to your long term goals. (For example a BIG goal for you is to speak to people, then reading novels and looking up words may not be as useful a study activity as talking to a tutor 4 times a week. You might do both study activities, but you might find one more useful for the bulk of your time).

This is related to the ‘hours spent to learn a language’ thing. Look up CEFR (A1 lower beginner, A2 upper beginner, B1 lower intermediate, B2 upper intermediate, C1 lower advanced, C2 upper advanced) and read the descriptions of what people generally can do at each language proficiency level. If your language has a different popular grading scale for language level, look it up (JLPT for japanese, HSK for chinese) and read the descriptions of what people can generally do at that language level. Just like ‘hours to learn a language estimates’ this may be generally useful but not super specifically critical. What I want you to focus on is generally, what should you be able to do as a beginner. Generally, what should you be able to do at the intermediate level etc. Then decide for yourself: how long do you want it to take you to get to the level of being able to do beginner level things? Intermediate level things? This is how you’ll decide how many hours a day you study. (I’m about to be REALLY rough estimating here so look up more if you want specific hour estimates for time it takes to get to X level in a specific language). If for example you’re studying French, and French takes 600 hours for ~B2, then make a guess it will take maybe half as long 300 hours to get past beginner level (A1-A2) stuff and start studying intermediate level stuff (B1-B2). As in, by 300 hours you should be able to do beginner stuff, and be able to START DOING and learning how to do intermediate stuff. So if you want to be done studying beginner stuff within a year? Then plan to study 300 hours or more your first year. And this is where it gets more important, in my opinion. When you pick a structured study method like Glossika, a college course, Pimsleur, Coffee Break French podcast, ANYTHING... look at the course contents description and see how much it teaches. Does it only teach beginner level stuff? Then if you use it, prepare to be DONE with it in 300 hours or less. I have wasted a lot of time using a beginner resource longer than I should have, by going through it slower than I intended to. If I’m spending 1000 hours on the first 500 words I’m studying in chinese, I messed up. HSK 4 (which is lets say for simplicity’s sake is ‘lower intermediate’ B1) is supposed to be around 1200-2000 words learned. So by 1000 hours of chinese study, I should have already learned that many words. If I’m still studying 500 beginner words, I am covering new material slower than I probably should be. For me personally this problem cropped up for me more when I A. used pre-made study resources (like Pimsleur and Assimil), B. got perfectionistic and started reviewing way too much instead of making sure I studied new things at least 50% of my study time. If you’re a beginner, please stop and think about this kind of stuff for a few minutes before buying any study program. Here’s what I like to (very roughly) use as my deciding factor: lower intermediate level usually expects learners to be familiar with at least 2000 common words, and to be able to start reading basic things (like texts of ‘how are you? what do you want for dinner’) and start being able to read simple stuff (like comics and novels for kids) and watch some shows (in genres about daily life and familiar topics) with some level of comprehension and the ability to follow the main idea if you pause to look some words up every few minutes. If you can do all that? You’re probably lower intermediate at least, or high upper beginner (A2) and will probably be intermediate level soon. If you are looking at a new language learning resource and you’re a beginner? Then you’re going to want to look for resources that will teach around 2000 common words or more, at LEAST basic past/present/future grammar. (And ideally some listening AND reading skills practice but sometimes both aren’t in one program). The Old Glossika programs tended to have 3000 sentences, probably a bit less unique words but still probably over 2000 unique words. So Old Glossika courses are fine for a beginner, they teach beginner level information. Your goal would be to get through the Old Glossika course in the amount of hours you’re guessing you’ll need to get to intermediate or less (for french it might be ~300 hours, for chinese it might be in ~1000 hours). If it’s taking you LONGER to get through the course, you’re probably procrastinating or its not clicking well with you so you’re struggling to learn from it. If you’re an intermediate learner? Old Glossika courses are going to mostly waste your time, because you likely know almost all of the content they teach. If you have weak listening skills (like me) then you may find glossika useful to practice listening (so practicing what you already studied), but it’s not a full course you’ll rely on alone to make progress. If you are a beginner, and you use Pimsleur (which last time I checked for like japanese had only 800 words), then you’re going to want to get through that course in less than 500 hours (if ~1000 hours is roughly half the time for intermediate B2 fluency, and 1000 hours is when you’ll want to have studied 2000 words already). And once you’re done with pimsleur, you’ll want to find a language learning resource to teach you the NEXT 1500 common words you need to learn. This kind of contemplating will also help you rule out “money wasting” programs for you. Rosetta Stone is... quite the thing... and when I used it, it would take me 1 hour to study 20 words. That was too slow a rate for me, since with reading I can study 50 new words in an hour AND review hundreds of words as I see them. So I prefer to read over using Rosetta Stone. Some very ‘cheap shot’ language learning resources will claim to ‘teach you to fluency’ and only teach 500 words. lmao. 2000 words is only starting to shift into intermediate skill level, and fluency is above that! so 500 words is not going to get you to fluency, that’s a lie lmao. Now... those 500 word programs may still be useful, if you’re using them shorter term and you’re a beginner who needed to learn them anyway and likes the resources teaching method. BUT I think where a lot of learners mess up, is they read that the course claims “teach to fluency” so they spend 2 years on that course. Because they were putting in those ‘600 hours for french fluency’ or whatever. But the actual course only had 500 words, so they’d never reach fluency using only the course. So after 2 years they feel miserable that they’re still beginners after completing the course that claimed fluency, and give up. Duolingo is probably the biggest app that causes this in learners (from what I’ve seen). Duolingo, for many of its courses, teaches 2000-3000 words. If you fully complete a duolingo course, it should put you at either A2 (upper beginner) or B1 (lower intermediate) in vocabulary. So how long does it take in a college course to cover 2000 words? 2 semesters, 1 class for A1, 1 class for A2. In college, you’d have learned 2000 words and started intermediate classes after 2 semesters. So if you’re using duolingo, and want to make progress just as fast? Then finish the duolingo course in less than a year. (We are ignoring how the classes would also teach writing, speaking, listening too, while duolingo is not going to be building those skills as much, but you get the general idea). LOTS of people spend 2-4 years on duolingo, then wonder why they’re still a beginner. That’s why. Because a person using some other resource (or self studying) probably already studied those 2000 common words within 1 year. You didn’t. Because you thought duolingo would teach to fluency, as the app sort of implies it will, so you took your time going through lessons assuming intermediate to advanced level skills is what you’d end with. Incorrect. At the completion of duolingo, you’ll be (at best) a lower intermediate level in the language you studied. If you’re going to use an app (or resource) like duolingo, look up how many words it actually teaches, and decide when you want to be through the lessons. Duolingo works fine if you study 1 hour a day, finish it in 6 months to a year, then go on to intermediate resources to study from. Some people on youtube who’ve shared success using duolingo tended to study like that. But if you study 5-15 minutes a day, like the app sort of encourages you to? then you are going to take many more days/months/years to get to intermediate since you’re doing less study time per day. First: no study method works “way faster” than another, except the study methods you can easily focus on and do versus the ones you can’t. So in the end anything you can do is going to be hours studied=progress. Duolingo takes just as long as reading and looking up words (if you can focus and easily do either activity), to make progress. If you spend 15 minutes a day on either you’ll make progress slow, if you spend an hour on either you’ll make progress faster. (It should be said, at least for me personally, I do like study methods that show MORE NEW STUFF per hour... so you can slightly increase progress rate if say like me reading you encounter 50 new words an hour, but in anki you can’t focus and only encounter 5 new words an hour). Second: check what a language learning resource actually covers. A lot will claim to teach you to fluency, but check what actual words/grammar/skills they teach. And then plan accordingly. Duolingo will only get you to A2/B1, so know you’ll need to make a plan to learn intermediate stuff when you’re done with it, and not to spend more time on it than you’d like to. Old Glossilka courses will only get you to B1 in listening, so plan to do other stuff for learning intermediate level stuff. Pimsleur (last time I checked) gets you only to A2 upper beginner (at best), so plan something else to teach the rest of the beginner stuff and move into intermediate stuff, do not expect pimsleur alone to get you to fluency. 

For the people that need to hear this: you’re allowed to study any way you want. You’re allowed to study the ‘traditional textbook and explicit grammar instruction way,’ the ‘comprehensible input’ way, a combination, or another way that you found/came up with. Truly just do WHATEVER works for you. Whatever gets you studying new stuff regularly, and practicing stuff you’ve already studied, WILL work. There’s absolutely endless debates about the right method for learning languages, and some people really stick tightly to one specific method (that works for them). You’re allowed to do that, and allowed to do it with the method other people around you aren’t doing even if they say your method ‘isn’t as good.’ You’re allowed to use several methods, at once, whatever you want and works for you! You’re allowed to use a method even if people say ‘it doesn’t work.’ Because honestly, in 300 hours, 600 hours, 1000 hours, you will sure KNOW if it worked or not. Based on if you’ve made improvements in what you can do in the language. I saw a guy who did 2000 memrise common word chinese cards, no hanzi study, read a bit of basic grammar, and then brute force read novels in Pleco. Worked for him. I saw one person who did NO preparation and just started brute force reading chinese webnovels with a click-translation tool, it worked for them (I could never do it lol i’d be exhausted, but that’s what worked for them). I saw one person who did Genki 1 textbook for japanese, then genuinely just watched anime with NO subtitles and no word lookups (they would rewatch episodes, watch episodes in english then again in japanese for context clues, etc) for like 2000 hours then passed the N2 listening test for JLPT. I saw one person who learned by Listening Reading Method for hundreds of hours (who can focus way better than I can lol). One person did a speaking/listening japanese class (so minimal kanji study), Genki (so like 1000 vocabulary words learned), then learned more words by watching japanese shows and using english subs to guess audio japanese word meanings (so yes... to the right person subs in your native language can be useful to language learning even though it’s against general advice). there’s some people who just brute force studied 10,000 sentences in anki then got tutors for speaking/writing practice who passed N1 JLPT tests in a few years. There’s Kato Lomb who learned a lot from reading novels and looking up words, guessing words from context. A lot of reading (my favorite method). There’s people who did amazing with audio flashcards (japaneseaudiolessons.com founder learned primarily that way, i do quite well with them too). Some people do great just going through a comprehensible input lesson plan and learning primarily IN context by doing (like Dreaming Spanish youtube, or the book French by the Nature Method I used to learn a lot of french). Some people do excellent in college/formal courses (they are designed to get through through beginner, intermediate, advanced, and capable of passing language level tests). Some people learn primarily by chatting with people, and preparing to chat (there’s a guy who made a youtube video “learn french in 30 days” and the title is clickbait of course, but the study plan was solid - it was 5+ hours a day of picking topics he could not speak on, looking up all unknown words and grammar and writing scripts, then video taping his speeches on those topics, watching the video and noting his errors or having a tutor watch and help him catch errors and correct them, practicing giving unscripted speeches on the topics and video taping and again checking for errors, then practicing conversations on the topics with language partners in free conversation... as you can see the study plan included learning new words and grammar, practicing speaking and writing and listening). You can make progress in a ton of different ways. Don’t feel you aren’t allowed just because some random person somewhere didn’t find it to be the right method/methods for Them. 

[reynanghugot]

[23:19PM] Kamusta na nga ba ako? It's been weeks since the last time na nag life update ako. Siguro nga sobrang dami kong pinagdadaanan lately. Sabay-sabay. Hindi ko alam saan mag po-pause, saan titigil, saan mag tutuloy-tuloy.

Kung mutuals tayo sa ibang soc med alam niyo hindi talaga ako okay and thank you for checking on me from time to time. Sabi ko nga sa inyo diba, ako pa ba? Kayang kaya ko 'to.

01. Work Update - yun na nga. I'm still an active employee and yet wala pa kong resignation na naipapasa dahil sa di ko alam kanino ipapasa as usual LOA pa din ang tagging ko sa work.

02. School Update - as usual, consistent president's lister tayo mare. I am working so hard na maka graduate talaga on time and di magka problema next academic year. Di pa ko enrolled pero that's okay, extended naman. Ewan ko, may takot din kasi sa end ko pero kaya ko 'to, ako pa ba?

03. Health Update - nakakatakot, nakakaba. Blood test nanaman next month to check my cancer eme sa katawan ko if mag zi-zero siya since nag RAI ako last month. Yung stress, yung anxiety di ko maiwasan pero shempre kayang kaya ko 'to, ako pa ba?

04. Family Update - mom got sick to the point na nahihirapan siya maglakad (so far, mejo okay na but still tuloy-tuloy pa din ang pagpapa gamot niya), tapos yung isang kapatid ng lola ko namatay (isa sa pinaka close sa family namin) due to papillary thyroid carcinoma which is same sa sakit ko. Alarming? Yes sobra, kasi nasa family talaga namin yung sakit ng cancer and acceptance is really the key aside from healthy living nalang para maiwasan. Despite ng mga problema na yan, happy and proud din ako kasi yung brother ko ga-graduate with Latin Honor. Yes, Magna Cumlaude and sobrang proud na proud ako sa kanya.

05. Relationship Update - kami pa din, walang bago. eme!

Ayun lang naman, sana okay lang kayo. If nahihirapan din kayo sa life minsan laban lang! Baka di lang para satin yung araw. Baka sinusubok lang tayo. Baka bukas okay na uli. Kaya wag susuko. Aja!

[valentina-lauricella]

Una poesia di Trilussa dall'aldilà

"Caro amico, vorresti comporci una poesia intitolata 'Lo spiritismo'?"

La risposta cortese fu la seguente:

"Nel 1916 ho già composto una poesia con questo titolo, ma allora ero scettico; ad ogni modo ve ne farò volentieri un'altra, una quartina per ogni seduta. Trilussa (Salustri Carlo Alberto)"

LO SPIRITISMO

(Dettata medianicamente dopo la morte da Trilussa)

Novembre 1951

Era de moda Eusapia Paladino

e 'gni tanto la sera a casa mia,

s'aridunamio accanto ar tavolino,

pe' conversà co' l'anima de zia.

Lei nun mancava mai l'appuntamenti,

margrado ch'io nun ce credessi affatto

“perchè” pensavo “co' st'esperimenti

c'è caso che diventi mezzo matto”.

Me pare strano assai che li cristiani

pe' potè conversà coll'altro monno

deveno formà un cerchio co' le mani

come li regazzini ar girotonno!

Se sapeva che barba de' scenziati

come Richette, Crocchese e Bozzano,

erano stati in parte cojonati.

“Perciò” pensavo “è mejo annacce piano!”

Però ce stava sempre quarche cosa

che me lassava in dubbio e pensieroso:

l'apporto de' na' foja o de' na' rosa,

un fojo co' no' scritto misterioso,

na' stretta sulle spalle all'improvviso,

l'impronta de' na' mano drento an vaso

un ciancechio come se fusse raso.

Immezzo a sta' buriana er tavolino

ce venne a dì che c'era na' persona

pronta a parlà con me, che poverino

n' fonno n' fonno ero n'anima bona.

A me nun parse vero e n'cominciai

a damandaje chi era e che voleva.

“Stai bene? M'aricordi? Come mai...”

Ma a ste' domanne lui nun risponneva.

De botto ce ordinò de fa silenzio

e incominciò a dettacce adagio adagio

“Sabato venti aprile, via Crescenzio,

nun t'aricordi più?...” e sto' messaggio

era un messaggio de parole belle

che solo io fra tutti li presenti

potevo riconoscele: eran quelle

cose che si so' tue, te te le senti.

La frase che me disse era d'amore,

d'amore puro senza cose strane.

“Amore” disse “m'hai rubbato er core...”

“ma nun durò che poche settimane...”

Che d'è lo spiritismo? In quer messaggio

ce stava n'antra vita; sì, 'un finiva.

Capii ch'er monno è un ponte de passaggio

fatto pe' riportacce all'antra riva.

(Da R. Piergili, Quegli spirti..., Diari - Trascrizione di sedute medianiche del Gruppo spiritualistico "Gastone De Boni", Roma, vol. I)