It is now day 321. It feels like a really long time has passed. I haven't missed a single day since last time, but there have been a bit less than a dozen that barely count.
I'll just go through the highlights.
After the last post I've read a dozen or so chapters of Madoushi Michi.
I also read a few more fairytales on Hukumusume: Urashima-san (and) Ko-soda Yuurei.Since I had decided to move on to more difficult text(Madoushi Michi) I stopped reading fairytales after those.
At one point I translated a song by Yousei Teikoku(妖精帝國) called Viscum Album, since I wanted to know what it's about. Link. I am sure it could be done much better, but at least I now know what I wanted to know.
Near the end of March a friend told me he had some coupons for a language learning site. It turned out that they also have a course for Japanese, so I tried it out. It's called Transparent.
Intrigued, I started and finished the Japanese course in less than 2 weeks. It was disappointingly small and so the relatively higher-level content wouldn't be possible to reinforce on that site. I finished nonetheless, as I saw it as an opportunity to add a couple hundred words to my Anki deck.
On youtube there is a channel called Japanese Ammo with Misa. She has excellent videos for learning grammar and she explains things in a way that I understant. I haven't watched many, but I plan to watch all of them at some point.
I joined OhMyJapan and found some people there to talk to. Apparently my level is high enough that if I write slowly, I can make myself understood. I feel like a child though, since I use only simple grammar and often build strange sentences.
I tried writing a short story in Japanese and while I'm fine with the result, it's too embarassing to post it.
Eventually I got tired of reading Madoushi Michi and quit, because the amount of new words
was too hard to keep up with. A hundred new words a day? I could do that
sometimes, but as is I'm not good enough to consistently work this hard.
The main problem with the words in Madoushi Michi is that they are
too high-level for me. When I started reading the story, I had learned
less than 2000 words in total, so it would be better to focus on easier
words first.
Thus I started looking for other stories to read on the same site and came across something familiar. I had seen the Slime anime, so I was aware of what kind of story it was. I began reading this instead of Madoushi Michi. While the grammar isn't necessarily easier, the words so far have been a little lower in level and thus, more useful.
I've also watched around 10-20 more anime series by this point.
Throughout the months I also quadrupled(4x) the Japanese words I have in Anki. I now also keep a large amount of unlearned words so that if I wanted I could just keep going for several days no matter the pace.
One day I noticed that the Duolingo Japanese course had become longer. I haven't done much yet, but I plan to finish it again, since unlike previously the course now contains way more Kanji. There are also more example sentences, more vocabulary, more grammar, etc. Overall it's more of the same good stuff that I was there for in the first place.
I am now at 6221 words in Anki, 953 of them unlearned and 4 suspended for not sticking in my head. Having learned this much, I feel like it's starting to get more difficult than it should be. There have been months where I learned around 900 words, but as time goes on I feel more and more that learning just words is not enough. For the year I've spent on Japanese and considering the amount of words I know, my ability to actually read, write or speak the language is low.
Thus, lately I have begun to think about changing how I learn. I've been learning Russian for way less time, but the progress feels faster considering how little effort I've put into it. One major reason seems to be that in Russian I don't learn only words, but also sentences. I have 2 separate decks for Russian.
It seems reasonable to do the same with Japanese, but I haven't got to it yet. That said, I don't think learning words by themselves is necessarily bad. It's just incomplete.
Sunday, September 8, 2019
Tuesday, March 5, 2019
Huge progress and new methods
It has been a while since the last post, 96 days in fact. At least that's the days I worked on Japanese since it's now day 135. I probably missed a few days, but not that many.
(According to google it has been 102 days, which would leave the amount of missed days at 8. Not a big deal, I've been keeping up every single day for weeks.)
By now I have 1958 cards in Anki, 193 of which I've added in the last few days from reading Kintaro, Nezumi-Kyou and that thing, most of them from the latter.
So far my list of stories read is thus(14):
Momotarou - That I talked about last time.
O-tsukisama ni Itta Usagi
Tsuki no Naka no Usagi
Hanasaku Jiisan
Warashibe Chuuja
Omusubi Kororin
Tsura no Ongaeshi
Kachi-kachi Yama
Kamotori Gonbee
Rikitarou
Hachikazuki Hime
Oitekebori
Kintarou
Nezumi-Kyou
Today I started reading what seems to be called Shikkaku Kara Hajimeru Nariagari Madoushi Michi.
Or shortly, that thing.
It's way harder than the fairytales I've been reading so far, but I am actually capable of understanding it somewhat. A huge improvement when just a bit more than 3 months ago I got PTSD from reading a single line:
"美術鑑賞の備忘録とデジタル画挑戦のために始めたブログが、けっきょくはいずれもできず" (from https://ameblo.jp/art00art/)
I can't understand the sentence as a whole, but it seems to have something to do with art notebooks, digital art and being able to do them sooner or later.
That is, I didn't get a heart attack.
Learning kanji has been hard, not because the signs themselves are that bad, but because sticking to it every single day can get tedious.
However, ever since completing Duolingo I've understood that sometimes turning up the pressure improves results.
For a while I didn't find a way to do that in Anki without burning out. Going through the reviews became a chore as I kept forgetting words that I should by now have known. Clearly it's not enough to just drill words into my skull.
So I started to look for a way out. A way to learn Japanese without putting myself through that ordeal. What I knew was that practice was necessary and I wasn't going to give up Anki, but if I only did that I would eventually give up.
So I started reading again, with the intention being that reading is primary and Anki is only there to make me forget less. It was still a chore.
That is, until 28/02/2019, which was 5 days ago.
For a while I had been changing how I use Anki. Instead of just answering straight away I began to keep a word in front of me until I could forget it and remember it again just by looking at it. This was effective unlike the rote practice from before, but it had a huge dowside: it took me several hours to go through reviews and if I ever tried speeding up it got tiring. Learning was even worse, taking an entire day for just a couple dozen words.
Previously I had accepted that as just being the work required, but no more. What I needed was a way to make myself forget a word without waiting. To do so, it would be optimal if I could just look at other words meanwhile without the scheduling logic of Anki interfering.
Once I knew what I wanted, the answer came quickly: Advanced Previewer, a plugin for Anki.
At first I made a filtered deck to use it, because I had trouble getting the previewer to only work on due cards, not new ones, but then I found that Anki has a bug whereby some review options in filter decks turn the card back into a completely new one.
Thus I started to use previewer in the normal deck instead and with all those changes my pace has skyrocketed. I complete 100-200 reviews in less than an hour and can learn almost as many words by spending the same amount of time.
My method for using the previewer is simple:
0. Set the search filter to "deck:current is:due" or "deck:current (is:due or is:new)"
1. Go through the list with previewer, answer all words you know.
2. Look at all words even if you don't know them and try to remember.
3. Refresh the list by clicking search and opening the previewer again.
4. Repeat from 1.
The result is that I don't have to spend 5-6 hours on Anki anymore and it's so much easier to put in work every day.
Instead this created a different problem - Putting in new words is tedious and if I take them from a list like the ones on wikipedia, half of them will be irrelevant. This is what I've tried to fix for the past few days by simply reading more.
Hence why that thing is handy: it has lots of words that I would expect to find in a fantasy context, yet isn't so complicated that I would be unable to read it. I can verify these words by just how they sound - having watched over 80 anime series, I just find a lot of them familiar.
Just a final note, I find it much easier to read Japanese text now, even if I have to consult Yomichan for half the words.
又ね
(According to google it has been 102 days, which would leave the amount of missed days at 8. Not a big deal, I've been keeping up every single day for weeks.)
By now I have 1958 cards in Anki, 193 of which I've added in the last few days from reading Kintaro, Nezumi-Kyou and that thing, most of them from the latter.
So far my list of stories read is thus(14):
Momotarou - That I talked about last time.
O-tsukisama ni Itta Usagi
Tsuki no Naka no Usagi
Hanasaku Jiisan
Warashibe Chuuja
Omusubi Kororin
Tsura no Ongaeshi
Kachi-kachi Yama
Kamotori Gonbee
Rikitarou
Hachikazuki Hime
Oitekebori
Kintarou
Nezumi-Kyou
Today I started reading what seems to be called Shikkaku Kara Hajimeru Nariagari Madoushi Michi.
Or shortly, that thing.
It's way harder than the fairytales I've been reading so far, but I am actually capable of understanding it somewhat. A huge improvement when just a bit more than 3 months ago I got PTSD from reading a single line:
"美術鑑賞の備忘録とデジタル画挑戦のために始めたブログが、けっきょくはいずれもできず" (from https://ameblo.jp/art00art/)
I can't understand the sentence as a whole, but it seems to have something to do with art notebooks, digital art and being able to do them sooner or later.
That is, I didn't get a heart attack.
Learning kanji has been hard, not because the signs themselves are that bad, but because sticking to it every single day can get tedious.
However, ever since completing Duolingo I've understood that sometimes turning up the pressure improves results.
For a while I didn't find a way to do that in Anki without burning out. Going through the reviews became a chore as I kept forgetting words that I should by now have known. Clearly it's not enough to just drill words into my skull.
So I started to look for a way out. A way to learn Japanese without putting myself through that ordeal. What I knew was that practice was necessary and I wasn't going to give up Anki, but if I only did that I would eventually give up.
So I started reading again, with the intention being that reading is primary and Anki is only there to make me forget less. It was still a chore.
That is, until 28/02/2019, which was 5 days ago.
For a while I had been changing how I use Anki. Instead of just answering straight away I began to keep a word in front of me until I could forget it and remember it again just by looking at it. This was effective unlike the rote practice from before, but it had a huge dowside: it took me several hours to go through reviews and if I ever tried speeding up it got tiring. Learning was even worse, taking an entire day for just a couple dozen words.
Previously I had accepted that as just being the work required, but no more. What I needed was a way to make myself forget a word without waiting. To do so, it would be optimal if I could just look at other words meanwhile without the scheduling logic of Anki interfering.
Once I knew what I wanted, the answer came quickly: Advanced Previewer, a plugin for Anki.
At first I made a filtered deck to use it, because I had trouble getting the previewer to only work on due cards, not new ones, but then I found that Anki has a bug whereby some review options in filter decks turn the card back into a completely new one.
Thus I started to use previewer in the normal deck instead and with all those changes my pace has skyrocketed. I complete 100-200 reviews in less than an hour and can learn almost as many words by spending the same amount of time.
My method for using the previewer is simple:
0. Set the search filter to "deck:current is:due" or "deck:current (is:due or is:new)"
1. Go through the list with previewer, answer all words you know.
2. Look at all words even if you don't know them and try to remember.
3. Refresh the list by clicking search and opening the previewer again.
4. Repeat from 1.
The result is that I don't have to spend 5-6 hours on Anki anymore and it's so much easier to put in work every day.
Instead this created a different problem - Putting in new words is tedious and if I take them from a list like the ones on wikipedia, half of them will be irrelevant. This is what I've tried to fix for the past few days by simply reading more.
Hence why that thing is handy: it has lots of words that I would expect to find in a fantasy context, yet isn't so complicated that I would be unable to read it. I can verify these words by just how they sound - having watched over 80 anime series, I just find a lot of them familiar.
Just a final note, I find it much easier to read Japanese text now, even if I have to consult Yomichan for half the words.
又ね
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