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Kuji’s Krazy Log II | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5262 days ago 2241 posts - 6731 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 593 of 706 16 October 2014 at 2:11am | IP Logged | ||
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Expugnator, if you could explain again how you get dual subtitles to work, I'd appreciate it.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4847 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 594 of 706 16 October 2014 at 2:31am | IP Logged | ||
Yeah, intensive reading with parallel texts is better than intensive reading without parallel texts. I can do that with Portuguese, but it is quite annoying to do with Japanese because of the Chinese characters. In a Japanese-English parallel text, I can see what a character means, but I can't pronounce it unless I look it up in the dictionary. So I read Japanese without the English translation, and I usually look up unknown words, or I read it in Firefox and use a pop-up dictionary (which is awesome, but again, I don't have as much computer time as I'd like. Maybe if I took another sabbatical from HTLAL... hehehe). And yes, please explain more about how to do double subtitles. :) * * * * * THE ENGINE HAS LOST STEAM I hope I didn't scare you with that title; it's hard to find a good train-related idiom for this. :) I've given up doing language learning on the train. Well, I haven't completely given it up; I'm sure I'll still do some language activities on the train. But commute time will no longer be my primary "language time". It was great from the summer of 2012 to the summer of 2013. The 80-something minutes of commuting provided the bulk of my study time every day, and I got a lot done both in Japanese and in Portuguese. But since last year, I've gradually struggled to consistently study on the train. It's been really bad the last couple of months. Some days, I can study with no problems, but other days I'm just not in the mood. There isn't only one reason why it's become difficult; it's probably a mix of factors. Sometimes I'm sleepy when I'm on the train. There was a period of time back in the summer when I was going to bed late, but since then I've made sure to sleep enough every night - about 8 hours. And yet I still get sleepy sometimes on the train. Even when I am not sleepy, there are other factors: frustration and stress from work, crowded trains, noisy trains, hot trains, cold trains, tiredness from too much work or too much exercise the night before, etc., or even a combination of those. The train has become an uncomfortable place to be for me. I've been trying to tell myself mentally that these are just excuses, that I need to just bear down and work harder to study on the train. But I think that forcing myself to study when I'm not in the right mood was not a good idea, because that makes me associate language learning with negative feelings. It might be better to just "go with the flow": study when I'm in the mood, and don't study when I am not. Now, there are some less intensive things I can do on the train most of the time, in various moods. I can listen to music, do Anki reviews, or listen to podcasts from JapanesePod101 or PortuguesePod101, for example. But things like intensive reading or working through DLI... those are hard to do when I'm irritated on the train. So I'm no longer going to expect to be able to do those on the train. Of course, now I have to think about when else I can do consistent language learning, and there's only one answer: at home. But I can't do 80 minutes of study every day like I could on the train, at least not during weekdays. 30 or 40 minutes is more likely. I think I'll just have to accept a reduced amount of consistent language time every day. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6597 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 595 of 706 16 October 2014 at 3:02am | IP Logged | ||
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Don't try to find 80 mins. Find 10, 15, 20, whatever. Maybe a classic pomodoro (25 min). Also when the weather is nice, you can minimize the distractions by going outside.
And I hope you've seen this wikia article? Again it sounds like intensive reading adds to your stress. But you have tons of options :) Consider limiting the number of words you look up, or not writing them down, or picking stuff with audio so that you knew the pronunciation. Consider also reading on familiar topics, where you'll know what the author is trying to say/explain. (I suppose that's why L3-based coursebooks irritate me less if at all) 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4847 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 596 of 706 16 October 2014 at 7:45am | IP Logged | ||
Thank you, Serpent, for the tips and that link. I'll look into the options and see if any of them work for me. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5166 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 597 of 706 16 October 2014 at 9:10pm | IP Logged | ||
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It's simple. Optimally, I download both L1 and L2, and I use
SRT Merger I have to hope both subtitles are synced and there's also an issue with encoding, but the outcome is powerful to boost my reading and listening in real time. When there are hard-coded subtitles, I download the missing pair and open it at a separate window. Still useful. There are several other resources that already have double sutbtiles, like some Chinese series and Ted Talks (I can do the merger manually or use an app to watch the videos). 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5262 days ago 2241 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 598 of 706 16 October 2014 at 9:24pm | IP Logged | ||
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Muito obrigado, expugnator. To sync subtitles you can use a resync tool called SubShifter. You have to do a manual count and add or subtract but it works well.
3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4847 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 599 of 706 20 October 2014 at 4:47am | IP Logged | ||
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I've found that when I'm learning a language, I learn more than just a language. I learn a lot about myself and how to improve myself. I've learned about how to discipline myself. I've learned how to be patient (well, still learning). I've learned some things about my own native language. I'm learning how to learn.
I've been a little frustrated in my aerobics classes at the fitness club I go to. Aerobics itself is a lot of fun, but I've felt uncomfortable because, other than some greetings, nobody really talks to me. I go there with my wife, but people do talk to her, while they seemingly ignore me. It's interesting because I always thought of my wife as less social than I am. But I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that my wife is Japanese, and I'm not. People are probably inclined to be more comfortable around people that come from the same culture and background than those that don't. It could be more than just that. Perhaps people are intimidated by my height. Back when I was in the U.S., my friends gave me the nickname "Smurf" because I was always the shortest in the group (I'm 5 feet 8 inches tall, or about 173 cm). But here in Japan, people have called me tall, or talked about my long legs. That takes some getting used to, because I grew up not seeing myself in that way. People are perhaps turned off by my temperment as well. I'm soft-spoken. I'm not really wordy; I carefully think about everything before I say it, so sometimes I speak slowly and without emotion. I try to smile whenever I can, but I take aerobics seriously, and when I'm really working on a move or a spin, I wonder if I have a scary-looking facial expression. Anyway, to get to the point, instead of sulking about all of that, I made up my mind to be proactive and do something about it. Perhaps if I talk to them instead of waiting for them to talk to me, they'll be more relaxed and willing to talk back. And while I can't talk about everything, my Japanese is decent enough to have some conversation. However, I found that I have trouble thinking of what to say when starting a conversation. I thought it had something to do with my Japanese. Perhaps I need more speaking practice. But now I think it also has to do with the fact that I'm not really good at starting conversations or making small talk, even in English. I've always relied on people to talk to me, instead of starting conversations myself, so that's a skill I need to work on. I'm beginning with a website called SucceedSocially. There are some good tips on how to start conversations there. But I want to see if there are any similar websites for Japanese people, as starting conversations here are probably culturally different from the way we do it back in the U.S. So I'll search for that as well. I'm aware that this is a huge change to make, and it won't happen overnight. But I think that if I can make an improvement in my social skills, a lot of things will improve in my life, and that includes my target languages. Can't speak to people and get speaking practice if you have bad people skills in the first place. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| kraemder Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5184 days ago 1497 posts - 1648 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese | Message 600 of 706 20 October 2014 at 6:32am | IP Logged | ||
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Im jealous you're married to a japanese wife. I'm sure people are more comfortable talking to her but all you
have to do is talk or get people used to talking to you and it should be easy. The Japanese tutor at my school didn't speak grammatically correct English but she is very outgoing and talks a lot so nobody cares. And nobody feels shy talking to her because she's not a native English speaker. Sometimes she's boring when she talks but it's all good. The key is that she talks. I would just try talking to people and asking them questions and stuff. Sports are generally an easy topic of you're talking to guys. I doubt anyone cares what kind of face you make while you're exercising. You were called smurf？^_^ I'm 6'1 and that's generally pretty tall in the states but not really tall. I'd like to see what it's like in Japan towing over everyone... 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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