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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 5056 days ago 2237 posts - 6731 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 569 of 706 25 August 2014 at 3:54pm | IP Logged | ||
Reminds me of the classic Pogo quote from Walt Kelly
Edited by iguanamon on 25 August 2014 at 3:55pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4641 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 570 of 706 26 August 2014 at 5:25am | IP Logged | ||
Haha... yep. I'm my own worst enemy. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4641 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 571 of 706 26 August 2014 at 5:39am | IP Logged | ||
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One way to get back to consistency is to continue to log here what I do every day. Easier said than done; sometimes I'm too busy to get on HTLAL. But some is better than none.
Yesterday afternoon on the train I stayed awake! That's it. Just kidding. I stayed awake, AND I studied. I finished the drills in DLI Portuguese Basic, Lesson 34. The lesson was about two people on a cruise ship to Rio. More interesting than the bank lesson before. I also wrote a short journal. This morning, I did a PortuguesePod101.com podcast (Beginner Season 1, #24). Didn't learn much of anything new except the idiom Não vejo a hora. It literally means "I don't see the hour" (or is it "can't"? I don't remember right now), but you would translate it into English as "I can't wait." Sounds useful to me. I'm finding that one way to fight sleepiness on the train is to do some listening. Reading makes me fall asleep easily if I'm sleepy. On the other hand, listening does a somewhat better job of keeping me awake - but only if the material is interesting. I have a bunch of free PortuguesePod101.com podcasts saved up, and I also have a "review playlist" of dialogue-only mp3s cut from PortuguesePod101.com podcasts and from the DLI audio. Recently I added all of my favorite Portuguese-language songs to that playlist. Playing it on random, it's kind of cool. It's like listening to a radio station with talk shows and some music in between programs. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4641 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 572 of 706 27 August 2014 at 7:07am | IP Logged | ||
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Yesterday afternoon was Japanese time, and my plan was to write something in my journal, then read a folk tale. However, I couldn't do anything - not because I fell asleep, but because I was distracted. On the way to the train station after work, I saw one of my co-workers, a very friendly lady. If I get a chance, I like to chat with her a little, because she is always bright and smiling. We need more people like that in the world. But yesterday, when I approached her to say something, she quickly said "お疲れさまです" (a Japanese set phrase that roughly means, "Good job today", said by co-workers when they leave work) and, without a smile or even a grin, walked away from me. Confused, I spent the whole train ride trying to figure out why she did that. Did I say something bad before? Did I have something in my teeth? Was I sweating because it was hot outside? Was she tired of me? Or did it have nothing to do with me; maybe she was just having a bad day, like Daniel Powter?
In any case, I still don't know, even today. And I'm angry with myself because I let myself get distracted like that, instead of studying. So the only Japanese I did yesterday was some Anki reviews after I came home from the gym. This morning was much better. I planned to do what I didn't do on Tuesday. I ended up just doing the journal, because I wrote a lot. I wrote about what happened yesterday. It turns out that incident provided me with some nice writing material. The best part of it all is that I knew all the words I needed to write about that event except for two, even though I wrote two long paragraphs. After I wrote it, I read over what I wrote, and I was able to notice some errors and correct them myself. Things like that give me so much confidence in my Japanese. I think the decision to write something every day in my languages is paying off, moreso for Japanese, because it's time for me to use that language even more than I have been. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Evita Tetraglot Senior Member Latvia learnlatvian.info Joined 6346 days ago 734 posts - 1036 votes Speaks: Latvian*, English, German, Russian Studies: Korean, Finnish | Message 573 of 706 27 August 2014 at 9:59am | IP Logged | ||
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This is not language related but I'm always amazed when you say that you fall asleep on the train. I don't think I've ever done that in my life. First - how can you be sure to wake up when you need to? And second - how come no-one steals anything from you while you're asleep?
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| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4641 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 574 of 706 27 August 2014 at 2:54pm | IP Logged | ||
It's really easy to fall asleep on the train because the trains are really quiet. There are signs telling people to put their mobile phones on silent and to talk quietly. It's really common to see people sleeping on the way to work and on the way home. For me, I usually wake up when I hear the chimes sound to let people know the doors are open. I look to see if it's my station, and if it's not, I go back to sleep. As for nobody stealing anything... I cannot figure this out myself. Japanese trains are very safe, and I haven't heard of any pickpockets on trains. What makes this different from, say, Barcelona, I have no idea. You see guys walking around trains with huge wallets sticking out the back of their jeans like a third leg. It would be so easy for someone to just snatch it and run out the door, but it never happens. I always wonder when some criminals are going to figure out how easy it is to pickpocket on Japanese trains. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4641 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 575 of 706 28 August 2014 at 8:21am | IP Logged | ||
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Yesterday on the train ride home, I wrote a short Portuguese journal entry, then listened to my Portuguese review playlist.
Later that night, after swimming at the fitness center, I was waiting for my wife in the lobby. With time to kill, I opened an article in Portuguese about a Japanese girl singing Brazilian songs that I saw on the BBC Brasil website and saved on my Pocket application on my Android Walkman. I read it sort of "loosely"; that is to say, I read it without looking up anything. I was just depending on the words that I knew already, cognates, and wild guesses. I was surprised at how much I was able to understand, although I didn't understand many details. There were a few interesting sentences I found with only one unknown word, so I saved those for later input into Anki. I planned to continue reading the article this morning on the train, but I was a bit tired, so I did what I did yesterday afternoon: journal entry and review playlist. As for Japanese, today before lunch, I was able to get a good 10 minutes of Japanese conversation. I went down to the school nurses' room to take a break after a very loud class, and I talked with the two nurses there. It turns out that one of them - a fellow rabbit owner, like myself - will work her last day at the school tomorrow, so I had a lot to talk about with her. Yay for Japanese conversation and confidence-building! The thing I noticed today is that, although I do make many mistakes when speaking Japanese, I'm starting not to care so much. Before, if I made mistakes, I would be very hard on myself, pounding my head after the conversation was over. Now, I just try not to worry about it and keep going. As long as they understand me, it's okay. The accuracy will come later. I think this is a big development for me. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4641 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 576 of 706 29 August 2014 at 8:07am | IP Logged | ||
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Yesterday on the train ride home, I sort of took it easy, because the train was uncharacteristically noisy. I just wrote a short Japanese journal and listened to my Japanese review playlist.
This morning, once again the playlist, and another Japanese journal. But I also had time to read an Aesop fable from the Hukumusume site. It was called The Rabbit and the Fox - Part Two: Electric Boogaloo. Actually... I'm joking about the Electric Boogaloo part. If anybody understands that joke and what movie I'm referring to, you get cookies. Anyway... enough joking. The Aesop tale was very, very short: only two paragraphs. And it was kind of uninteresting. I did a more interesting activity at lunch. I had lunch with the nurse that I told you all about last time, the other nurse, and a computer teacher - all women. I was a bit nervous because they know no English, and the conversation was going to be all Japanese. If I misunderstood a word, there was nowhere to escape, hehehe. Luckily, it was not that stressful. There were a few times that I stumbled, but it was nothing major. Those women are very nice and patient, so that helps. And I could understand roughly 70% of what they were saying. I find that it's much easier to understand the Japanese spoken by women. However, I do have to be careful about learning "female Japanese". The intonation can be a bit different, but more importantly some word choices and a lot of particles and sentence endings are quite different from those that Japanese men use. All in all, it was a qualified success. I may not be improving as fast as I want to, but I have improved, and I could tell that today. I sometimes went to the nurses room six years ago when I first started working at the school, and I had more trouble speaking Japanese then. EDIT: I forgot... I also wrote an email to my Japanese pen pal. I found a pen pal at InterPals, and we do language exchange via email. It turns out that she lives in the same city as well! So there are some things we can talk about. Edited by kujichagulia on 29 August 2014 at 8:10am 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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