#japanese progress

[rigelmejo]

Read 7 pages of an actual Japanese novel in Kindle app today, looking up some words as I went. Definitely easier than when I tried in summer. Took like 10 or 20 minutes for those 7 pages but hey its better than 5 minutes per page! Which was my initial speed in chinese lol.

I have been using the free lessons in Satori Reader (a japanese graded reader app), so it made me cocky and I wanted to see if I could handle a japanese novel better than last time. I can confirm at least THIS TIME I'm overall following the plot, back in summer I couldn't even do that. I still am vague on some details even with word lookup though, partly due to grammar and partly cause kindles japanese dictionary sometimes gives NO RESULT and neither do its other 2 "definition boxes" giving any result so I'm like well fuck I guess I'll just GUESS this word only then.

Reading a real novel is exciting! And cool! My first time ever in a way, doing it in Japanese.

I'm reading いもうと（新潮文庫), by 赤川 次郎. This author was recommended to me before as someone easier to read with nice novels.

I have been eying the novel: 彼岸花が咲く島 by Li Kotomi, an author who's written in Japanese and Chinese. I heard this novel conveys some story elements by writing only in Kanji, then only in hiragana, etc with very creative ways of using writing changes to tell some of the political ramifications of the story. I am assuming that means it will be a HARD read. (Since for starters I can't read words in hiragana-only well, for seconds I don't have the best grasp on Japanese grammar so altering it could drown me). But the concept or the book is SO COOL oh man do I WANT to read it.

[shadowstarkanada]

Been reading one of the Two Minute Mysteries books in Japanese. Kind of amazing how in some chapters, I've got 40+ new vocab words (fuck you, Cyril Makin! Stop making up war stories! I'd tell you to be yourself, but you're such a tool) and in others it's less than 20 and I can guess half of them by context, and it's more about making sure I get the reading correct.

But I have been able to figure many of them out, which is cool. Not the baseball one though. No, not everybody knows how many feet it is between the pitcher's plate and home base. Grumble.

I remember reading one of these in 2nd or 3rd grade or something and being excited that I knew the answer based on the fact that penguins don't live in the Arctic, only the Antarctic...

[warakami-vaporwave]

Some of my Oct 2023 sketchbook pages

[badassindistress]

I'm halfway through corset mockup one and two and it's kind of a look

[saitatsunami]

ONE × Touch (prologue) part two

[haveyoulistenedtothisalbum-poll]

Tracklist:

Introduction to the Snow • Isle unto Thyself • Black Rainbows • White Ball • Murders • 宇宙ステーションのレベル7 • The Mind Electric • Labyrinth • Time Machine • Stranded Lullaby • Dream Sweet in Sea Major

Spotify ♪ Bandcamp ♪ YouTube

[littleragondin]

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Yamato and Kakeru's evolving relationship through each episode's opening ~

+ the parting shot ♡

[iguessitsjustme]

I did a thing...I made this for me but feel free to join me while I track whether or not ql characters keep their glasses

[nordic-language-love]

Saw a new word today and even though it's new I can work what it means because I recognise all the kanji!

[creativenicocorner]

It's like they don't even know they're in a horror story. Well, I tell a lie, by this point in the story they've got the notice - but they stay silly.

Anyways, upcoming Glow Worms or rather: In the Depths of the Safflower Hills chapters are coming together~

[rigelmejo]

7/9/2023 update:

Listened to japanese for 6+ hours - 2 hours Final Fantasy X let's play, .5 hour listening to TTS audiobook while reading along, .5 hour watching Dracula musical, 3 hours listening to glossika japanese (on audio 10)

Dracula Musical: i watched this maybe 2 years ago and I remember it motivated me to want to get back into learning Japanese. Because I could follow the main idea (which to be fair, its based on Dracula so of course I could guess mainly what was going on based on the Dracula scene it looked like). Well I watched some of it again tonight: MUCH better grasp of specifics now lol. I'm relying on Kanji words heavily (because I can guess them faster), but the overall effect is still wooh I can follow some lines completely and other lines the main idea at least. Which is a lot more than the last time I watched this! I found it on bilibili with Chinese and Japanese subs if any of you want to watch. Notable features: its a rock musical, Dracula is played by a woman, the 3 brides of Dracula are played by men, Dracula is in love with Mina (like the Coppula Dracula movie). It also has my favorite Dracula ending of the various versions I've seen of the story.

【【荷花】D R A C U L A 熟肉-哔哩哔哩】 https://b23.tv/xv3grnN

Guardian TTS with kindle ebook: so if anyone else wants to go on this journey, amazon.co.jp has a lot of ebooks for fairly cheap prices (I think I literally got like 10 of the guardian ebook installments that come in chapters of 4, for free, today, just from points). I think you have to register with a Japanese address, and make sure you either use a different email than your amazon.com/other account OR you use a different password, so that when you log into kindle app you can log into your Japanese account (because if email used AND password are the same, you can only log into your first account you made - I ran into this issue until I just changed my password). To use TTS in Kindle app (on android), go to settings, accessibility settings, Talkback. Enable it. Pick where you want Talkback icon to be, I personally like putting it on my navigation bar so I don't accidentally tap it when browsing. Click Talkback settings, languages and install all the languages you need talkback to be able to do text to speech for. Pick the voice version of each language you most like the sound of. For language detection I suggest you pick Aggressive so it automatically reads the correct language when it runs into text in a new language (such as a web page with english then Japanese text). If you pick conservative, the audio may stay "English voice" even once other language text is encountered. If Talkback stops being able to read multiple languages (or any other app on your phone suddenly no longer can), then you'll want to to BACK into Talkback, back into Google language services settings, and re download the languages you need. For some reason Samsung likes to delete language data every so often if you aren't using it frequently. When Samsung deletes it, suddenly apps that use TTS on the phone have NO audio for non English languages (or non-whatever language your default is on the phone) and the phone will either NOT play audio for other languages at all, or attempts to play the audio with the default language voice (on my phone the English Voice) and it sounds absolutely awful and makes gratuitous mistakes.

Anyway. Once you have the japanese ebooks to your hearts content on kindle app, feel free to read. If you want TTS while reading, then open the ebook in Kindle and flip to the page you want to start on. Click Talkback icon. Then double click the ebook page. Once you've selected the page, Talkback should give directions on turning on Text To Speech (click twice, click twice to confirm). Then you should get a TTS voice from Talkbacks voice option you downloaded.

Actual progress while reading? Well I got through the prologue and chapter 1. For the prologue I just tried to follow the speed of audio (which was brain fryingly fast for me). For the first chapter, I read through it first and looked up unknown words. I confirmed my guess, which is that a lot of the Kanji words (in combination with me being familiar with these chapters plots already) means I'm guessing these words correctly for the most part. The major new words I need to learn: hiragana words! And the "helper" words that use Kanji (and tend to be 4 characters, Kanji hiragana Kanji hiragana). Words like just, suddenly, at the same time, drew back/fell back, and (4 variants for and used!). I also noticed a few grammar patterns that i guess I never studied a grammar guide High enough to either study or understand. 1. Adjectives (or maybe it's adverbs the way they were used?) Were used actually quite similar to the -ly in English or -de in chinese. Id see a descriptive word then a regular grammar pattern and it'd be describing the thing after it. After a few pages it got a lot more obvious when I was looking at a descriptive (which makes life easier). 2. I have had a rough idea of japanese sentence grammar for YEARS at this point. But actually reading I think made it clearer how to rely on the particles, and how much SHITA, DATTA, DEKITA, and SHI after verbs in the middle of sentences, crop up! I mean yeah they're all basic beginner class words. But just like English, do, was, did, doing are real fucking useful. Idk it wasn't like learning something new so much as reading enough I am able to notice This common pattern, which helps make it easier to single out and isolate hiragana only words that ARENT these and combination words that are HELPER words (like in the end, concluded, and then, just, suddenly) that I still need to learn. So basically, brute force making myself read IS Helping with improving my ability to parse words (which again is critical for figuring out hiragana words from conjugation and helper words from descriptives). 3. Word order was not actually as big a deal as... I guess ever? Maybe I've just listened to enough japanese I'm used to it. There was only two sentence where order confused me and it was a long ass descriptive sentence of Da Qing looking like a flattened fat persimmon and denting the car hood and saying it smells like a bomb dropped how did yunlan not notice, and the long ass description of Zhao yunlans messy room including all the items and how even a pig would be offended by being compared to its level of mess. Because I've read the novel I knew those parts so it wasn't too confusing, but they were very long sentences and I think I'd have been lost if it was a brand new novel to me.

[vilevampire]

the viewtiful joe anime is not lost media anymore. btw

quick context if you have no idea what I'm talking about. viewtiful joe was an anime that aired in 2004-2005. it was not particularly high quality or anything but regardless I have been pathologically obsessed with this stupid anime for like. 3 years atp I think ?? I started a whole project dedicated to it and I did (and still plan on doing) lots of things related to viewtiful joe but the important part is that a while ago someone joined my project's discord server saying he had the WHOLE ANIME IN JAPANESE !!!!

this was HUGE because so far I had never been able to find the whole series in its original japanese dub, only in some other dubs. I searched far and wide on the internet but to no avail. my biggest success was actually in stumbling upon the episodes ripped from brazilian DVD which just happened to come with the japanese audio track as an option, but that still was only some episodes. it wasn't even enough to complete season 1 (this anime has 2 seasons and 51 episodes total) let alone the whole series.

but that's in the PAST because now the whole thing is available FR FR. it took me a while to check the links this person sent me thru discord because my head's been so full of other stuff lately but I finally downloaded them yesterday and honestly. got UNBELIEVABLY emotional bc oh my god I love this anime AND I THOUGHT the day I would be able to see it in its entirely IN JAPANESE would never come... link here btw (some episodes haven't finished uploading completely yet so they appear frozen on archive.org's video player but that's temporary)

they have no subs because ofc nobody cares about this series enough to sub it but at least now if anyone became interested in subbing this anime they'd be able to do so without a hitch :)

[warakami-vaporwave]

Some of my June 2023 sketchbook pages

[wolfish-trickster]

A year ago i could barely read hiragana. Today i write my own diary in japanese, mixing hiragana, katakana and kanji as well, making complicated sentences with more than just one verb. In very bad and probably nonsensical grammar but hey, still a progress

[davetada]

"Exercise in progress"

Ginza, Tokyo, Japan

[adhd-languages]

Please don’t compare yourself to my blog because I only mostly show the highlights. And just because I reblog something about studying languages doesn’t mean I’ve actually done much that day!

There’s nothing wrong with taking it slow and enjoying the language! We’re all here to learn because we want to. There’s no pressure to learn quickly. Learning a language is a lifelong journey, and there’s no rush to fluency. Whatever amount you’re doing, it’s okay and you’re welcome on this blog :-)