#Please do correct my grammar/vocab if it needs it but please be nice

[krakenartificer]

Just saw that multilingualism poll you reblogged and... well bhuel... aon scéal agat?

Roinnt scéal agam ach ní cumas teanga agam 😅 (prays I haven't screwed up the grammar too badly 🤞)

An bhfuil Gaeilge agat?

[kitakataramen]

Why are you studying your target language? What inspired you to continue?

どちらも質問の回答は、私は日本に住んでいます。

^ not sure if this is an accurate way to say this, so anyone, please feel free to correct.

I started studying Japanese purely because I moved to Japan to teach English as an ALT. I applied because I was sick of my life back in Canada and wanted to travel- Japan happened to be one of the easiest places to get hired with my credentials, and I had a friend who already lived in Japan and recommended it. I didn’t seriously start studying the language until a few weeks before I was due to move- I remember studying hiragana flashcards on the plane to Tokyo, and all I knew was how to say hello and my name. When I arrived, I was placed in a rather rural area where hardly anyone could speak English, so Japanese was necessary. The (very small) city I lived in offered Japanese classes for us which were taught by local volunteers, so myself and the other ALTs in the area would attend every week, and we’d often study together on the weekends. 

My motivation for studying was that I wanted to know enough basic Japanese to get around on my own (ask for directions, order food, make reservations for hotels/buses, etc.) and to chat with my students (basic conversation skills.) I actually ended up picking up a lot of Japanese through teaching English at elementary and junior high school level, because I’d have to look up the vocab and grammar in Japanese in order to make sure I could teach it to them in English. So over 2 years of casual studying and living in Japan, I made it to N4 (I haven’t taken the JLPT but I’ve finished the N4 level text books I have, so I’m somewhere around there, but I know a lot of random extra kanji from learning how to read menus and food packages and online reservation pages and government forms and such.)

Entering my third year in Japan, I have a new job in a different town (I’m no longer an ALT but a full-time English teacher at a private business) and my company is having us take Japanese lessons while business is slow due to Covid. I take two 90-minute intermediate lessons per week, and the energy is nice because there aren’t any tests.

On the subject of tests: I think one of the keys to keeping up your studies is to avoid burnout. Be kind to yourself during your studies. Passing tests isn’t everything, especially when it comes to language acquisition. I’m actually avoiding the JLPT on purpose, because I don’t (currently) need the piece of paper saying I’m N4, and because tests give me anxiety, and I don’t want to associate my studies with anxiety. I have a strict rule never to study in my room, in order to keep my work, study, and relaxation spaces separate. The goals I set for myself are not to pass tests, but to learn enough Japanese to be able to consume the media I love (games, movies, books) in Japanese. I generally study by watching TV shows or movies in Japanese, and reading my favourite childhood books in Japanese whilst writing down any vocabulary or grammar points I don’t know to study later.* To that end, I know a bunch of random kanji and vocab that’s well above the N4 level stuff I’m studying, but my speaking skills are pretty bad because I consume Japanese more than I produce it. 

If you’re looking for advice, what I recommend goal-based studying that isn’t based on tests- pick a REAL goal! What do you want to use Japanese to DO? And then start studying from there. If you can integrate language study with an interest you already have, it’s easier to avoid burnout, and you don’t have to beat yourself up about it if you fail a test. In my opinion, it’s the best way to keep yourself motivated and inspired to keep going.

*I’m currently reading Matilda, which is aimed at upper elementary schoolers in Japan and thus has quite a few kanji, but the difficult kanji have furigana.

[endless-season]

Hello! I’ll be spending a minimester (Jan 4-18th) in Japan next year and I’m sort of new to the language, do you have any advice on how to improve (at least make coherent sentences, learn the alphabet)??

Oooo nice! And ooo so prepared :’)

Someone who can’t actually string a proper grammatically correct sentence together in Jap probably shouldn’t be answering this…. (My En>Jap ability is almost nonexistent) so I suggest finding someone more suitable to ask t b h!!!

With that in mind, take the below with a grain of salt!!

Disclaimer: the following are hacky tips for making the most of your limited knowledge at various stages rather than a recommended way to learn Jap properly. If you have the time to learn Jap properly, please follow a set textbook (with audio sections you can refer to else YouTube works) or course and also find a native Jap speaker (either someone you know or maybe through one of those online language learning penpal portals) to practise conversations with (doesn’t need to be verbal, can be written if your pronounciation is decent)

If you’re super new then obviously memorizing hiragana and katakana is important. (How else will you search things up in a dictionary :D /bricked) If you don’t have much time then flash cards a minute a day could be a start… there’s also a bunch of visual cue cards out there if that’s what works for you.

Basic life living and conversational vocab is important! Even if your grammar is super basic, there is more chance of someone understanding you if you’ve got the keywords down!!!

There’s a bunch of learning apps and websites out there that are useful especially (imo) the ones that follow JLPT levels for learning grammar points… after you learn common particles/grammar it gets a lot easier to break sentences up so you know can fudge your way through with a dictionary if necessary…….. I have no advice on grammar bc my grammar sucks :| if anything just randomly think of normal sentences you say on a daily basis and attempt to translate them bc it feels more relevant and fresh.

Kanji is important and you should memorize them as you go and put in some effort to memorize idk the most commonly used 300 or something to start with but if you’re not gonna be doing any writing then you can just try to recognize them for reading purposes rather than ROTE learn how to actually write them.

[studiousbees]

[App Review]—LingoDeer (Japanese)

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

Learning Japanese?? I was originally going to review LingoDeer’s Chinese lessons next, but I was contacted by the team who developed the app and the lessons after the read my review on the Korean course. They asked if I was learning Japanese and, if so, if I could do a similar review for the Japanese course (please note that I have never done any sort of sponsored review or anything like that; I review what I want and I review them honestly). I said I would, so here we are! Maybe this will get me back on track with studying Japanese, anyway. Those of you who were around during this blog’s early stages will remember I was studying Japanese for a while, but I had to abandon it because I just didn’t have enough time ㅠㅠ Welp, it’s time to start again!

I do want to note that, other than the obvious language difference between this review and my review of LingoDeer’s Korean course, there is also a huge difference in my perspective between both of these reviews. Having studied Korean for over seven years now, my LingoDeer Korean review was done more from a been-there-done-that perspective. A lot of my intuition as not only a long-term Korean learner but also a Korean grammar blogger and a language teacher went into it. However, I am nowhere near the same level in Japanese, so this review is written from much more of a beginning learner perspective, with a bit of my teacher brain as far as what is and isn’t effective for language learning thrown in.

Now that I’ve gotten that out of the way, let’s jump on in!

What is LingoDeer?

LingoDeer is a language-learning app for the three major east Asian languages, Korean, Mandarin Chinese, and Japanese. It is developed by teachers of those three languages, so that’s pretty cool!

Very first impressions

As I said in my review of LingoDeer (Korean), the LingoDeer app’s design and interface is very clean and visually appealing. I do get some loading screens still, but none of them are super long unless I’m on my home Wifi. I’d been thinking about maybe getting a new, stronger router anyway... 

Learning Hiragana and Katakana

You can start with learning Hiragana and Katakana, or you can just skip it and go straight to learning the actual grammar and other material. For the sake of this review (and since my Katakana memory has always been pretty bad), I did the Hiragana and Katakana courses. Before you start a level in the Alphabet section, you can flip a toggle for whether you want to learn Hiragana or Katakana. Ultimately, though, it doesn’t really matter since they are presented together and you will be asked to match the corresponding Hiragana and Katakana. I have actually never used a source that teaches them together in this way, and I really like it because it made it easier for me to remember the Katakana. The main differences between doing one writing system vs. the other (for example, choosing to do them in Katakana mode instead of Hiragana) is that you will only be presented with stroke order diagrams for the set you chose, and they will occur more frequently. At the end of the day, the choice is yours.

 Again, the sound files in this app are really great, so you can hear the sounds very clearly. My only real issue with the Hiragana/Katakana-learning exercises is when you have to match multiple pairs at once. There are a few screens like that at the end of each level, and if you want to hear the readout of the sounds as you do them, you have to flip a toggle on the screen because the sound is off by default. Since this is a language learning app, I really think it would make more sense to have the sound on by default. Also, you have to flip the toggle every new screen rather than flipping it once and that being your setting for the level. Having to flip it every single time just to get the automatic audio got annoying pretty quickly.

Just as the Korean course had extensive Hangul charts, there are interactive Hiragana and Katakana charts in the Japanese course. You can click on the individual spaces to have the sounds read out, which I liked. However, there seems to be a little bug such that sometimes when I go to the charts they don’t read out when I press the spaces. In those cases, I have to restart the app for the charts to work properly.

Finally, there are notes explaining the Japanese writing system, and they’re quite extensive! This app certainly does give a lot of information.

Getting in to learning

This app is currently structured 100% for beginners in the sense that you must start with the first level. There is no way to test up into a higher level. This test up feature is there in other comparable apps, so its absence here is very noticeable. Until such a function is (hopefully) added in, anyone who wants to use this app will have to obligatorily do the lower levels first regardless of their skill level.

All of the actual learning levels have grammar notes at the beginning, which you can access if you swipe to the tile left of the first lesson tile. I think it would make more sense to have the notes tile be the first one you see, as it is easy to miss and the notes give a ton of important information that beginning learners really should read. The notes are detailed and very helpful, but there are some typos here and there, and I noticed some unusual Romaji (though I’m not sure if it’s just that they were using a different Romaji system... are there multiple Romaji systems??). The word for “China,” which I had always seen before in Romaji as “ch(y)uugoku,” was written as “tyuugoku,” which threw me off.

When you get into the learning levels, you can choose how you want writing to be displayed, and there are a TON of options! You can go for full on normal Japanese writing with the Kanji and all, Kanji with Hiragana (my setting), Hiragana only, Romaji only, Hiragana and Romaji... you can choose what would suit your needs best and adjust as you become more comfortable reading Japanese.

As for actually learning, there is a variety of activities including word-picture matching, listening and choosing the right answer, inserting grammatical elements into the right places, and unscrambling sentences, and more. The only thing that I really wish the learning levels has is some speaking practice! I’ve said it many, many times before, but HelloChinese is a similarly structured app that has speaking practice built into all of its levels. If LingoDeer also had it, I would be so happy~ Also, as I mentioned in my LingoDeer (Korean) review, this app is fairly quiet in the sense that it does not automatically read out sentences for you on some screens, and there is no indication given that you can access audio for those screens. It would be nice if there was maybe a little play button to make it clear that you can hear audio on those screens with no auto play, or maybe an overall option (that could be toggled on or off as you please, of course) for automatic audio playback.

One other little bone I have to pick is that, when doing syllable-by-syllable unscrambling of sentences, the app starts indicating what the first syllable you pick should be within about three seconds. Maybe some people like the hints, but I could do without them for sure. I would be happy if the time to hinting was increased, or if there was a toggle to turn it off completely.

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

The biggest error I have seen in this course so far is that the notes in the “Household” section (as far as I got so far) are missing ㅠㅠ I sent a report in, so hopefully that’s fixed soon. Considering how responsive the LingoDeer team has been to me so far, I’m fairly confident it will be fixed soon.

Overall, I like the structure of the lessons and the pacing. I could definitely see myself using this app long term!

Review and stats

(This section is more or less copypasta from my previous review, so feel free to skip it if you read that one!)

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

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

Oh, and there is offline learning! You can download the course take it with you if you are, say, going on a flight or off to some remote area where there is no internet or cell service!

Conclusion

LingoDeer’s Japanese course is really fun and easy to use! The grammar notes are very informative, and the lessons are not too heavy so they don’t feel burdensome or intimidating to a new learner. The pros and cons:

PROS:

GREAT audio files

Lots of good notes and information on grammar

Spaced repetition practice and flashcards

Study reminders

Lessons that are informative and useful without being overwhelming

Offline learning

CONS:

No function to test out of lower levels

Typos in notes and other places

App clock not synced to phone clock

No speaking practice

[guillemelgat]

Thank you @fractalrainbow for tagging me!! (Their post is here btw)

Rules: reblog and tag 10 others

1. What language/s are/have you studied?

I am currently/actively studying Catalan, Basque, Welsh (sort of), Malayalam, and Western Abenaki, and I have studied/am studying but taking a break on Spanish, Arabic, Turkish, and small amounts of German, Kurdish, Amharic, and Bosnian.

2. How long have you been studying?

Spanish - 7 years

Welsh - 5 years

Catalan - 2 years

Turkish - 2 years

Malayalam - very erratically my entire life, I learned a bit when I was 10 or so but I’m going to say that I only started a few months ago

Basque - 1 year

Arabic - 9 months

Western Abenaki - 5 months

3. Did you learn through class or self-study (or both)?

I learned Spanish in school which got annoying after a while because if you’ve ever taken Spanish in the United States of America you’ll know what I mean. That being said, I really learned Spanish by self-study and everything else I’ve learned through self-study too (classroom learning is awful a good 99% of the time).

4. Why did you decide to learn this language?

Oh dear

I had to take Spanish in school (fun fact: I used to hate Spanish for no apparent reason, I would just get mad whenever my parents tried to speak it), but I really got into it when I became a huge soccer fan in 8th grade, since that made me start listening to stuff in the language, and also I started listening to trash music in Spanish too which helped a lot.

Catalan was 100% Barça’s fault, but I’m also just a sucker for random languages and Catalan brings me joy.

Welsh was because of this series called The Dark is Rising, the last two books are set in Wales and there’s some Welsh in them, and I was instantly in love (I told you I learn languages for irrational reasons).

Turkish I learned for absolutely no reason at all besides “I saw it in the Duolingo Incubator and I wanted it”.

Basque is because I’m so obsessed with Xabi Solano and Esne Beltza and above all the trikitixa and traditional Basque music like you can’t even begin to comprehend how much of my life I spend on it it’s bad

Malayalam is my dad’s native language and I want to not look stupid when I’m visiting family in India so yeah

Arabic has always interested me for some reason, but I also wanted to learn it because the refugee crisis and other issues in the Middle East are interesting and real and I wanted to address them in their native language (so much for that goal I can’t understand anything). Also Mashrou’ Leila came into my life and just never left.

Western Abenaki I’m honestly not sure why I decided to learn but it’s from New England like me and it’s super interesting!

5. What was a major highlight / milestone in studying this language?

I guess Catalan is the only language I’ve actually felt rewarded in, and the first time I met Catalan native speakers was absolutely amazing and I just felt so unbelievably happy that I could communicate with them. I don’t know why but just hearing people speak in Catalan brings me indescribable joy (I know I’m weird). Also when I was in Barcelona I got by fine in Catalan and I surprised a fair number of people at museums and stuff by talking to them in Catalan and then telling them I was from the US - they thought I was from Catalunya.

6.What was the hardest thing about studying this language?

Definitely for all of my languages the hardest thing would be a lack of native speakers teaching me the languages and also for some of them the lack of resources. Learning Malayalam with my dad has been so easy, since he can correct me or tell me the phrase for something, while with languages like Western Abenaki and Basque I just sort of fumble along until I find a sentence with a matching structure that proves me right or wrong.

7. What resources did you find most useful for studying this language?

Catalan and Spanish I learned mostly just with direct input from songs, TV shows, etc.

I used SaySomethingInWelsh for Welsh, and also my precious Modern Welsh Dictionary and Modern Welsh Grammar, which are great! While SSiW was hard for me to get through and definitely not all the vocab I needed, it did work and I can use most Welsh auxiliary verbs without a second thought, so I’m grateful to it for that.

For Basque I used a lot of direct input, but this pdf is super helpful and also the Basque Wikipedia page. The Mikel Morris dictionary also helps a lot.

For Turkish I used Duolingo, and it shows.

For Malayalam, I used my dad, the legendary ca.1970 pamphlet “Learn Malayalam in 30 Days” that I paid 30 rupees (not even a dollar) for (I would not recommend it), and, although I haven’t used it yet, Learn Basic Malayalam in Six Weeks.

For Arabic I’ve checked out a lot of stuff, the Memrise course on Arabic script was a godsend and really helped a lot, and the Colloquial Arabic course seems to be the best book I’ve seen on the language so far (I want to learn the Levantine dialect, not MSA).

For Western Abenaki I’ve used mostly westernabenaki.com as well as a couple random theses which has been intense.

8. Any top tips for studying this language?

For any language, make sure you have a good reason to learn it, get frequent input even if you’re not learning every day, start with stuff from native speakers and familiarize yourself with the living language, enjoy the grammar, and don’t be afraid to take a nice, long break if you need it.

9. What’s your next major language goal?

I’m going to an Abenaki powwow in August so I want to try to get down the basics of the language before then, and I also want to take Catalan in my first semester of college this fall (probably not going to happen but let me dream), so I need to work on reading more advanced texts and regaining my ability to speak the language.

10. Anything we can do in the Tumblr community to get you there?

Correct me if I make mistakes please, it would really help a lot!! And definitely reach out to me if you’re obsessed with one of the languages I’m studying, I’d love to talk to you! If you ever need someone to reach out to about anything, I’m here and honestly would love some nerdy language-loving friends (y’all are great I love you so much)

I don’t want to awkwardly force anyone to do this but please please please if you want to, just do it, consider yourself tagged :) sorry for the really long post, I just love my languages