kraemder Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5182 days ago 1497 posts - 1648 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese
| Message 1401 of 1702 30 May 2014 at 7:47pm | IP Logged |
I couldn't help commenting on this article on adult language learning. Adults don't have a disadvantage when it comes to language learning.. please. I think the whole world knows that's a dishonest statement. Still I liked some of the points they make on what adults do have going for them.
5 Things for Adults to Keep in Mind while learning a foreign language
2 persons have voted this message useful
|
kraemder Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5182 days ago 1497 posts - 1648 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese
| Message 1402 of 1702 31 May 2014 at 8:13pm | IP Logged |
I just had a German conversation session via Skype (italki) for 45 minutes. It was fun. We just talked about whatever. I will have to ask her next time if she is grading her language much for me as I'm curious how well I'm doing. As I talk, I know that I am making lots of little mistakes on the grammar as I'm really making zero effort to think about grammar as I talk but about what I'm saying instead.
I haven't studied German at all except for this chat session and I read an article online about how German is becoming more popular in Asia than before. I'm sure no where near the level of English but still, it's getting bigger which the Germans I'm sure are happy to see.
My German teacher says she doesn't have a problem learning multiple languages at once. She studies each language every day and just dedicates a certain amount of time to each language.. she sounds very disciplined. Very German I guess.
I think a big reason I haven't been able to juggle Japanese with any other languages is that I pile on so much vocabulary that my reviews are pretty much at or beyond what I can reasonably study in a day. And I barely get any grammar SRS in. If I slowed that down I would probably be ok but I don't want to. hmm. I suppose I could just read an article in German every day though. I think it's very easy to do and unlike Japanese it doesn't take very much mental effort.
I did 8 FLEX lessons on JOI this week. That's a lot more than I have ever done. I bought a lot of lessons at once to save money and I still have a lot left so I need to use them. Last fall, doing 8 lessons in a week would have drained me of energy and I think I'd feel like a zombie but now it's really not bad at all. I wanted to make SRS flashcards for the grammar I studied but haven't done so yet. I hope to do so today.. but I'm feeling lazy...
1 person has voted this message useful
|
kraemder Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5182 days ago 1497 posts - 1648 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese
| Message 1403 of 1702 01 June 2014 at 6:14am | IP Logged |
I've always been bad with names (which sort of implies I'm not a natural at learning languages) and that goes especially for character names in anime and books and well anything. Shows that go on forever obviously I'll pickup more names through sheer repetition but shows that only last one season I might completely forget the names of the characters.
So I decided to make an anime name SRS deck. It has a pic of the character one side 1 and the info on side 2. I'm using http://myanimelist.net/to make the cards and wikipedia to get the Japanese name of the anime on there too. I just started tonight but I'm quickly seeing that this is something I should have been doing a while back. That site has the correct Japanese spelling for the names so not only will I learn a lot of Japanese names but I'll get exposed to the kanji too. At this time I'm not specifically testing myself on the kanji but it's on side two and I'm reading it. I think there's a lot of kanji from RTK that didn't get used in any vocabulary and seemed useless but is coming in handy now.
1 person has voted this message useful
|
kraemder Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5182 days ago 1497 posts - 1648 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese
| Message 1404 of 1702 07 June 2014 at 9:18pm | IP Logged |
I made another youtube vlog.. but it's mostly English. I actually did more Japanese but then started wondering if I was making sense and just stopped. Maybe that was a bad idea who knows.. I'll try for all Japanese next time. With English I can just do 1 take and it's done but Japanese.. man.. it's take after take and I'm just not happy with it. And I don't really want to spend all day making a 10 minute Youtube video that will be of minimal use to anyone anyway.
Link to the youtube vlog
I got a new version of Vegas though which has support for internet compatible video full HD which is really nice. My older version was from 2009 and only went up to 720p I guess. Well, for formats compatible with youtube. So I'm happy with that. This will let me do video of my desktop too I think and have the text be readable.
1 person has voted this message useful
|
kraemder Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5182 days ago 1497 posts - 1648 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese
| Message 1405 of 1702 08 June 2014 at 12:58am | IP Logged |
Well today stinks for studying Japanese. I have no motivation. I'd really like to go out and do something but there's nothing going on and well I can't go running until sunset. Way too hot. I got caught up on Fairytail so I can't just binge watch it anymore.. but I found another anime that's really easy to follow w/o subs on Netflix - Chobits. It's adult oriented but the jokes are stupid easy. It's about a college age kid that moves to Tokyo to go to school (I thought he got rejected by the school but he's taking a class so that's a little confusing) and apparently humanoid robots are really common. He's poor and computer illiterate but lucks out and finds a life size girl robot in the trash that seems to work perfectly. Maybe we'll find out later why she was in the trash.. lots of jokes about him being self conscious about being a hentai. It seems creative and original enough to hold your interest though. Then again, it's from 2002 so it's old and that might be why it seems different?
So I'm gonna watch more of this. I fought my way through the majority of due cards in my Japanese app but seem to have hit a wall of sorts with 30 due still. Maybe later.
*edit*
Saw a sign outside the school where he's at.. 関予備学. So it looks like he's in a prep school for people too dumb to go from high school to college. I think.
Edited by kraemder on 08 June 2014 at 2:18am
1 person has voted this message useful
|
kraemder Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5182 days ago 1497 posts - 1648 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese
| Message 1406 of 1702 13 June 2014 at 10:17pm | IP Logged |
I'm kind of wanting to change my iPhone for an Android as I'm tired of the little screen. And Swiftkey has Japanese support now too (albeit in Beta). I always wonder if Google ever got around to fixing the Japanese font problem as outlined in this blog.. http://blog.vengaglobal.com/japanese-font-issues-on-mobile-p hones but it seems not. Unless you switch your phone to Japanese.. and I don't know all the words they use on my phone and I hate it when some warning message comes up and I have no idea what it says.
I guess I'm stuck waiting for Apple to make a bigger iPhone. I'm kind of happy that Swiftkey is coming to iOS with iOS 8. At least that's what they announced. I wouldn't put it past Apple to change their minds and pull the trigger on that though.
1 person has voted this message useful
|
kraemder Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5182 days ago 1497 posts - 1648 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese
| Message 1407 of 1702 13 June 2014 at 10:25pm | IP Logged |
I'm currently enjoying Ghost Hunter on Netflix (I really enjoy being able to turn off subs on my mobile devices as opposed to Crunchyroll which is hard subbed for mobile devices). It's another show that's pretty easy to follow (in general) without subs. the main character is a girl who in the tradition of horror movies can be so stupidly oblivious to the obvious that you want to write バカ with a magic marker on her forehead. But the show is still pretty addictive. It's older from 2006.
1 person has voted this message useful
|
kraemder Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5182 days ago 1497 posts - 1648 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese
| Message 1408 of 1702 14 June 2014 at 8:54am | IP Logged |
OMG I want to write バカ on Mai's (麻衣) forehead. Stupid. Stupid. grr. (She's the lead in Ghost Hunter).
1 person has voted this message useful
|