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Brun_Ugle flies again (TAC 2012 team い) | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Woodsei Bilingual Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member United States justpaste.it/Woodsei Joined 4798 days ago 614 posts - 782 votes  Speaks: English*, Arabic (Egyptian)* Studies: Russian, Japanese, Hungarian | Message 57 of 276 26 January 2012 at 8:04pm | IP Logged | ||
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Hey, I thought this might be of interest to you:
Dramas With Japanese Subs I found this post on the RevTK site. Never tried them, but I guess now I will! Cheers! Edited by Woodsei on 26 January 2012 at 8:04pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Brun Ugle Diglot Senior Member Norway brunugle.wordpress.c Joined 6621 days ago 1292 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English*, NorwegianC1 Studies: Japanese, Esperanto, Spanish, Finnish | Message 58 of 276 26 January 2012 at 8:20pm | IP Logged | ||
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Actually, I don't think 3 hours should really be so hard considering about half of that would normally be reading, watching TV or other pleasant, easy activities. I do want to get 3 hours a day on average, but usually I just focus on doing my kanji reviews and anki at the very least. Then I try to get in some textbook or grammar work. The rest is just fun stuff. I like to time it to keep track though. That's just the way I am.
Actually, my main problem is that I am no good at organizing my time. I should probably take a little time-out from studying to learn some time-management skills. I'm sure I would quickly make up for lost time then. I will definitely be looking into all those sites. They look very interesting. Edited by Brun Ugle on 26 January 2012 at 8:46pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Brun Ugle Diglot Senior Member Norway brunugle.wordpress.c Joined 6621 days ago 1292 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English*, NorwegianC1 Studies: Japanese, Esperanto, Spanish, Finnish | Message 59 of 276 29 January 2012 at 9:19am | IP Logged | ||
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First, another milestone. No, I haven’t finished Heisig’s crazy kanji adventure. At 7 kanji per day, book 3 will take me approximately forever. This is a new milestone. I’ve just noticed that I’ve now completed my first 100 hours of TAC. I’ve also done just over 300 hours since I started keeping track in November.
Log for 2012.01.26-2012.01.28 inclusive Reviewing the Kanji: Time = 1:33. New kanji = 24. Heisig gives almost no help at all in RTK3. It’s mostly just a picture of the kanji and a list of primitives. Technically, I suppose one could just use the website and never buy the book, but it is kind of nice as a reference. And it has tips on the readings if one wants to use them. Read the kanji: Time = 1:39. Before I complained about how slowly this site gave me new kanji, but now they go almost too fast. ANKI review: Time = 2:26. Sentence Mining: Time = 1:25. As I get further down the frequency list, I’ve had to go over to using Google to find sentences easily. I still want sentences that are interesting and relevant for me though, so I search for the vocabulary word plus a topic I’m interested in. Reading: Time = 2:02. Listening: Time = 1:20. This includes a drama and some podcasts. I must say the podcast was very interesting. I wanted to start at the beginning, so I flipped back to the first page and started at the bottom. The first 10-12 podcast were just tests. At first, it didn’t even occur to him to turn off the TV. I thought maybe he’d do that in the second test, but no. It wasn’t until the third or fourth that the TV noise disappeared. Then it sounded like he was recording in a chicken coop next to a saw mill. It kept me laughing anyway. Every once in a while, he’d do one where the sound quality was really good, but he didn’t think so himself. He thought it should be louder. Unfortunately, the louder ones have a very poor quality of sound. He should have stuck to the quiet ones and just let us adjust the volume ourselves. Finally, he got to some real podcasts. I didn’t have too much problem understanding since they went fairly slow. He talks something like this, “Today…mmm…..no…yesterday…um…..I went to see….uh....my mother’s sister…..um…..my aunt….” At least he’d found a better place to record in than a chicken coop. Real studying: Time = 2:22. I’ve gone through the first two chapters in my textbook and now I’m going to do them again before moving on. The reason I do two chapters before reviewing is that these are old recordings on cassette tapes. Since there is one chapter per side, it’s just easier to do both chapters rather than rewind. I’m finding this very useful. There are a lot of grammar and conversation drills and I really need them. My Japanese speaking skills/ pronunciation had gotten so rusty that I could barely wrap my tongue around the sounds. Now, after only two chapters, my pronunciation and especially my speaking speed has increased greatly. Total for period: 12 hr, 47 min (made up for my laziness last time) Total since start of TAC 2012: 106 hr, 01 min Total since I started keeping track (2011.11.06): 300 hr, 23 min And now a word of advice: If you’re planning to go out for a walk, even a short one of only 30-40 minutes, don’t drink a cup of coffee, two cups of tea, and a glass of water right before starting out. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Sunja Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6086 days ago 2020 posts - 2295 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English*, German Studies: French, Mandarin | Message 60 of 276 29 January 2012 at 2:24pm | IP Logged | ||
he-he! I'm such a wimp when it comes to walking I only get 20 minutes into my route then I have to turn around and come back. The weather is partly responsible. It's typical rainy, cold and icky. It sounds like you're really staying on the ball with your studies! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Brun Ugle Diglot Senior Member Norway brunugle.wordpress.c Joined 6621 days ago 1292 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English*, NorwegianC1 Studies: Japanese, Esperanto, Spanish, Finnish | Message 61 of 276 02 February 2012 at 9:49am | IP Logged | ||
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Well, it’s the end of the first month already. I suppose I’ve learned a bit, but it doesn’t really feel like it. Actually, it often feels like I’m more confused than ever. As I shove more and more knowledge into my head, it seems to squeeze out the stuff that was already there. It all gets scrambled together and I find myself forgetting the simplest things. Really simple things. Things I learned in the first couple of weeks of study way back when. Like how to form the past tense. Of course, I am well aware that this is part of the learning process and it will all sort itself out eventually, so I try not to get discouraged.
I’ve decided to only post updates of my hours once a week as it’s probably kind of boring, and write other things the rest of the time. I started out intending to write about things I’d learned, like grammar, and about books I was using and so on, but it seems I quickly lost sight of that. Anyway, I want to get back to it. So I will update my hours on the weekend, and when I’ve have time on other days, I will try to write about anything interesting I’ve learned. Naturally, as soon as I try to post this, my internet connection disappears. I think it gets squeezed out too. It usually has only one or two lines on that little symbol that shows the signal strength, and there are a bunch of other networks in the area. So whenever one of them suddenly gets stronger with four or five lines, mine gets squeezed out. At least that’s my hypothesis. Since I know nothing about this kind of thing, it could be complete nonsense. I suppose I should talk to the landlord, but I doubt much will get done. I asked him about fixing the fan above the stove, which has never worked, and which has now started to leak. He said he’d fix it “next week.” That was about three weeks ago. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Brun Ugle Diglot Senior Member Norway brunugle.wordpress.c Joined 6621 days ago 1292 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English*, NorwegianC1 Studies: Japanese, Esperanto, Spanish, Finnish | Message 62 of 276 04 February 2012 at 9:28am | IP Logged | ||
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I’ve been thinking about the false friends found between Norwegian and Japanese. One wouldn’t expect to find any friends false or otherwise (unless you count English loanwords) between two such unrelated languages, but I can think of two.
The word for 2 in Japanese is pronounced “ni.” So is the Norwegian word for 9. I already have a tendency to mix numbers around a bit. I’ll say for example, 264 when I mean 246. I also have a tendency to say 1000 when I mean 100 or when I mean million. Add all that to the fact that Japanese count in ten thousands rather than thousands, and you can see that I might have a bit of a problem. (On a side-note, I have degrees in both physics and economy and work with numbers every day. Fortunately, I don’t have to say them aloud all that often.) The other false friend is the word 無理 pronounced “muri” meaning impossible. (Remember that the Japanese “r” can sound very like an “l” at times.) In Norwegian, the word “mulig” (the “g” is not pronounced) means possible. I already have a tendency to mix up opposites (an autism thing, I think) and say impossible when I mean possible and predictable when I mean unpredictable and so on. I also mix left and right and often have to check which hand makes the “L” and then think carefully. It’s kind of funny because I will say the opposite of what I mean, realize I’ve said it wrong, try to correct it, and it will still come out the same way. So this should just add to the fun. There is more fun to be had with autism and Japanese, but I’ll leave that for another post. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Brun Ugle Diglot Senior Member Norway brunugle.wordpress.c Joined 6621 days ago 1292 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English*, NorwegianC1 Studies: Japanese, Esperanto, Spanish, Finnish | Message 63 of 276 05 February 2012 at 10:06am | IP Logged | ||
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I think once I work my way up to working full-time again, Sunday mornings will probably be the best time for adding up my hours and figuring out what I actually did this week. So Sunday mornings it is.
This week, I had several days when I was so worn out I hardly felt like doing anything. That’s when studying turns into reading manga and easy novels, rather than grammar drills and reading my grammar book. I have managed to keep up with Anki and Heisig, but there were a few times it was almost torture. I try to do it by the “eating the frog” method. (If you have to eat a frog every day, it’s best to do it right away and get it over with. Actually, my mother gave me the same advice with foods I didn’t like when I was a kid. Even now I tend to eat things in order from least favorite to most.) So anyway, if I get up early enough, I try to get a little frog work in before going to work. The question is which frog to eat first – the Anki frog or the Heisig frog? I’ve also been trying to decide for about a month now what to buy from Amazon.jp. Because of the shipping prices, I want to make sure to get a number of things. I’ve decided on some of them, but I really want one or two more, and I just can’t decide. So I’ll see if I can muster up the energy to get that done. If I don’t, I’ll run out of fun stuff to read and I’ll be stuck with frogs all day. I’m afraid that some of the books I want to read are going to be too hard for now, so I should choose something easy. Decisions, decisions, decisions. This is probably why I don’t get to go out to eat very often. In other news, I’ve been trying to get back in shape and struggling because of my lack of energy. I’ve talked to my therapist about it and she says this might just be the energy level of normal people. Perhaps I’m looking for the manic energy I had before. I sincerely hope normal people don’t go around feeling like this. That must be awful. She also said that it could be that I’m still worn out after a year of severe depression and several months of psychosis. I’m going for that hypothesis myself. I can’t imagine this being normal. I did manage to do some strength training yesterday. I wanted to do my whole body while I had energy enough, since at other times I’ve tried to take it a little easy and been so exhausted that I didn’t do anything for a week or so afterward. I figured, if I’m going to be exhausted anyway, I might as well have a reason for it. I had lost less strength than I imagined. Especially my legs were not so bad. I used to do squats with 63kg, and I went done to 55, but I think I might have been able to do a little bit more if I had pushed it. I guess walking in the woods does more than I thought. Bench press was not so good though. I was down to 30kg from my earlier 40kg. I’ve never pushed that too far as I have no one to spot me, so I don’t know what I could really do, but 30kg seemed hard yesterday. By the time I got to my arms, I was shaking from exhaustion, so I really don’t know about them. In addition to exercise, I have changed my diet. When I was depressed, I rarely had enough energy for anything more difficult than pasta or frozen pizza and the like. So now I have cut out junk food completely (another form of self-torture) and I eat a lot of salads and other healthy stuff. At this point, I imagine most people have given up reading this a good ten minutes ago, but here are my hours anyway: Log for 2012.01.29-2012.02.04 inclusive Reviewing the Kanji: Time = 3:55. New kanji = 42. Many of the keywords are so similar I’m getting confused. I think I need to make a list of kanji that I get mixed up and try to find a way to keep them separated. Maybe I’ll try to do that this coming week. Read the kanji: Time = 3:11. ANKI review: Time = 7:08. Sentence Mining: Time = 1:05. It’s actually kind of fun. It’s more fun to make new cards for Anki than to review them. Reading: Time = 3:56. Listening: Time = 0:06. Pitiful. As I said, I’ve had a lazy week. This always gets pushed to last and by the time I get there, I’m tired and just give up. Also, I bought “Big Bang Theory” on DVD and have been watching that instead of Japanese dramas. I love that show. My ex-husband used to always say that I’m just like Sheldon. Now I understand why. It’s so much fun to hear him say some of the same things that I’ve been saying for years, like about the illogicality of exchanging gifts. Real studying: Time = 3:09. Again, something I’ve been too tired to bother with at times. Total for period: 22 hr, 30 min Total since start of TAC 2012: 128 hr, 31 min Total since I started keeping track (2011.11.06): 322 hr, 53 min 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Luai_lashire Diglot Senior Member United States luai-lashire.deviant Joined 5829 days ago 384 posts - 560 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto Studies: Japanese, French | Message 64 of 276 05 February 2012 at 5:11pm | IP Logged | ||
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Energy is a big problem. I've been having issues with it too. I hope it gets better for you soon!
It looks like you are doing a good job of continuing to plug away at it, even if you're not doing as much as you would like. Keep it up! We can beat this. :) 1 person has voted this message useful |
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