#szilvi's japanese learning journey

[littleblackwing]

Haha, making a blog-post on my tumblr other than just reblogging all the good stuff? What is this? Well, anyway, I just wanted to share some thoughts and it felt like twitter is not the best for this.

Soooooooo... I started learning Japanese! And your first thought might be “oh yay, good for you!” or “you are crazy” and I agree with that. I feel crazy but at the same time I’m curious, scared, overwhelmed and lost sometimes, I’m also motivated and I feel all sorts of different emotions. It’s going okay so far, I started last weekend and by now I know all hiragana/katakana (with katakanas I still don’t know all the combinations but oh well...). Also, the added challenge is that I’m doing this with English resources and obviously I’m not a native speaker but I think I can manage it somehow (since the resources in Hungarian are just... kinda crappy and old school, sigh...).

I want to document this journey a little bit so I hopefully won’t lose my motivation or goals. Although documenting is a pain and so is learning something new. Because let me tell you... I’m the most curious person about things but if I lose interest or something else happens... I tend to procrastinate and not just for a shorter time but for longer (or I just lose interest forever). And I hate that part of myself and I have been trying hard since last year to change it. It’s going really slowly but hey! I continued crocheting that blanket I want to send to my buddy. Also, I read some books (even though they were “only” light novels) and continued some others hobbies. So I think that’s an improvement?

At the beginning of January an ad popped up on Facebook for an online course about Japanese and I was curious and it bugged me, I almost submitted the application but then I didn’t. I wanted to read about it a bit more, think about if it would be worth it and then a few days later I decided I’m gonna apply. Then I went to this site but turned out I waited too long and didn’t check properly the sign up deadline, I was two days late. :D I was a bit bummed and angry at myself for not checking the deadline properly but I thought I would sign up in March when a new study group starts up. I was fine with this idea for a week or so but then it started bugging me again... I read tofugu’s advice on learning Japanese but it seemed a bit scary even though it felt the most efficient way and I knew I wanted to learn it as efficiently as possible. So I started reading about what else is there and found a few posts like this from Bonyari Boy and then u/SuikaCider‘s post on reddit and their live google document. They all seemed to be talking about the tofugu way but the way they described it seemed more possible to do it than tofugu’s guide. What does this mean? Basically, ditch learning the kanas by writing them over and over again for at least a month, just learn them under a few days and later you can learn the writing as well. Then start learning the kanjis using mnemonics and at the same time/or after you know like a few hundred, start learning grammar. That’s it in a nutshell, it seems easy enough right? I mean, there are obviously a lot more going on than this but it kind of motivated me. I started looking at the offered options to learn the kanjis and decided for now to try out the WaniKani site and then learn about Anki in the meantime. Also, every single one of these documents suggested to set up a goal you would like to achieve so I have a few in my mind. I mean it’s obvious that 86 is a big part of it right now but even if in a few years I won’t be so invested I’m going to be forever a weeb and there will be new stuff that may have a manga/light novel not translated to English and I will want to know what it is about. Or just understand some of the youtuber’s I watch without subtitles and some live events aaand those Japanese artists I follow on twitter, I want to know what they are tweeting about (or the little comics they post, it’s so tiring to use Google Translate and it kept translating poor Fido’s little “Pi” to “Bitch” - that was hilarious, though). And yes, it will take time (please Szi don’t give up ) but I was thinking if I can keep learning it intensively every single day for at least an hour it may take only a year or two... and that is such a little part of my life. I guess it’s just creating a habit out of it and placing it in my routine. It’s not easy as one day is only 24 hours long and I have to work, do chores and other things but yeah, here I go!

Well, this was a long read and if you are still here whoa, thanks! I can’t guarantee I will keep this up to date but I wrote this as a draft like 9 days ago and posting it now and since then I’m still doing WaniKani every day, so maybe there is hope?