Language Journal: August 24th 2018 pt.2
I probably don't need to write another one of these today. But, I do feel like I need time to rest. Something about reading like this is kicking the crap out of my brain.
I am genuinely exhausted mentally.
It is surprising. Not because I didn't expect it to be difficult. But, because it doesn't feel difficult. For the most part I'm just reading. Some of the time I do stop and either look up a word, or scan the page for a bit of context. But, most of the time I'm literally, just reading the manga.
As such, I wouldn't really expect it to be any more draining than draining than, say, reading a book.
On the "it doesn't feel difficult" side of things. I think I somehow managed to end up with manga below the level I expected. I am no pro at Japanese, and there are certainly little grammatical bits that stump me here and there and certainly new vocab. But, by and large... I'm destroying this.
I'm not sure if that is a good or a bad thing.
It is just one book. The others may be worse. I keep telling myself that. But, it gets harder and harder to believe it.
I feel like proficiency in this language is sneaking up on me. I KNOW I'm not THERE. But, every time I run into some material, I find I'm further along than I would have thought. Lately, I'm able to focus a lot more on the audio in anime for instance.
It only occurred to me when my wife commented on some bad subtitling. I'm listening first and then using the sub titles to back fill any gaps in my understanding.
So I'm often not really "reading" the sub titles most times. I don't know how to describe it. I mean, I am, technically reading the sub titles. And they are helping with my comprehension of the content. But, I'm not reading them in such a way that the story is coming through to me from what I'm reading. I'm getting the bulk of the story from the Japanese audio. Like, I'm listening to the Japanese, and then translating the English I read back into that Japanese as well to reinforce what I heard.
So, sentences which seem weird to my wife, I don't even really notice as long as I can sort of intuit how the translator got to that translation from the Japanese. You could probably put the sentences in random order and I wouldn't notice it. I mean, that is a bit of a stretch (probably).
All of that being said, my speaking... still sucks. But then, I don't REALLY practice speaking or constructing sentences. So, that is probably to be expected. What I tell my wife is, I'm reasonably sure I could convey to a Japanese person what I want to convey 90%+ of the time. But, most of it would sound like a foreigner and some of it would take some time for me to think through how to make the sentence(s).
But then, this manga thing may help with that. Part of the hope is that while the formality and some of the words may be moot, that these at least contain rather common means of constructing sentences and expressing a number of concepts. And an exposure to a high volume of sentences like this should, at the very least, help my ability to form sentences. At some point, I should get into some short stories rather than manga, but for now, I could stand to benefit from the slower pace of new words and grammatical constructs.
We're only on day 3 I think. So, it is still tough to evaluate.
I am genuinely exhausted mentally.
It is surprising. Not because I didn't expect it to be difficult. But, because it doesn't feel difficult. For the most part I'm just reading. Some of the time I do stop and either look up a word, or scan the page for a bit of context. But, most of the time I'm literally, just reading the manga.
As such, I wouldn't really expect it to be any more draining than draining than, say, reading a book.
On the "it doesn't feel difficult" side of things. I think I somehow managed to end up with manga below the level I expected. I am no pro at Japanese, and there are certainly little grammatical bits that stump me here and there and certainly new vocab. But, by and large... I'm destroying this.
I'm not sure if that is a good or a bad thing.
It is just one book. The others may be worse. I keep telling myself that. But, it gets harder and harder to believe it.
I feel like proficiency in this language is sneaking up on me. I KNOW I'm not THERE. But, every time I run into some material, I find I'm further along than I would have thought. Lately, I'm able to focus a lot more on the audio in anime for instance.
It only occurred to me when my wife commented on some bad subtitling. I'm listening first and then using the sub titles to back fill any gaps in my understanding.
So I'm often not really "reading" the sub titles most times. I don't know how to describe it. I mean, I am, technically reading the sub titles. And they are helping with my comprehension of the content. But, I'm not reading them in such a way that the story is coming through to me from what I'm reading. I'm getting the bulk of the story from the Japanese audio. Like, I'm listening to the Japanese, and then translating the English I read back into that Japanese as well to reinforce what I heard.
So, sentences which seem weird to my wife, I don't even really notice as long as I can sort of intuit how the translator got to that translation from the Japanese. You could probably put the sentences in random order and I wouldn't notice it. I mean, that is a bit of a stretch (probably).
All of that being said, my speaking... still sucks. But then, I don't REALLY practice speaking or constructing sentences. So, that is probably to be expected. What I tell my wife is, I'm reasonably sure I could convey to a Japanese person what I want to convey 90%+ of the time. But, most of it would sound like a foreigner and some of it would take some time for me to think through how to make the sentence(s).
But then, this manga thing may help with that. Part of the hope is that while the formality and some of the words may be moot, that these at least contain rather common means of constructing sentences and expressing a number of concepts. And an exposure to a high volume of sentences like this should, at the very least, help my ability to form sentences. At some point, I should get into some short stories rather than manga, but for now, I could stand to benefit from the slower pace of new words and grammatical constructs.
We're only on day 3 I think. So, it is still tough to evaluate.
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