Language Journal: May 14th 2019
I finished the last batch of manga with probably a week or two to go until the next shipment arrives. I finished a short story on Kindle and now I bought Harry Potter in Japanese.
I got the idea from someone else.
Anyway, it turns out that while it can be quite hard to find Japanese language materials on Amazon's Kindle store, some major titles like Harry Potter are available.
Basically, it took quite a few months, but I can handle reading a decent chunk of Japanese at a single go now. Still not fluently and not as quickly as I can English. But, enough that I can finish a decent sized manga in 2-3 sittings with relative ease. And this leaves me two options; intentionally throttle my reading down, or find something else to fill the gap.
I think you can figure out which I've chosen. Now, there are caveats, and they are much in line with my manga reading. I'm not killing myself to understand and memorize every single line. I'm certainly pushing myself to learn, but the major objective is to reinforce the living hell out of the things I have learned already.
I've been learning Japanese for over 2 years now. And it has become obvious that if the majority of what I had already learned was good and properly cemented in my head, I'd probably be able to have a crack and being reasonably conversant in Japanese. I mean, this shouldn't come as a huge surprise.
After all, while I'm not killing myself to know every single word in the manga I'm reading or in Harry Potter, I've pointed out in the past that not knowing the basic structure of the sentence or missing out on as few as 2-3 words in a sentence makes it incomprehensible. And, sometimes, a single wrong word can have this effect. So, for me to be getting through this much literature even without that in depth focus, it means I'm picking up a lot more than I'm leaving on the cutting floor.
As for why I chose to fill the gap. That is pretty simple. I've known for a while that I'm hitting the end of what Anki can do to improve my Japanese comprehension without some major investment in either making my own decks or in searching out another one. And, as a platform, it has lost its appeal to me for new things. I can tolerate it for daily practice and the current batch of new cards. But, in a year or so, I'm hoping I can start phasing Anki out completely.
To get there, I think I need to be at the same place with Audio or Video as I am with reading. So, we'll see how that goes. I'm not there yet.
The way I think I'll get there though is by reinforcing and growing that base I already have with exposure to more written material. If I can make that vocab and grammar that I can consume in written form as automatic when listening, then I should be able to start to transition away from Anki, at least for Japanese.
Basically, I still do want to learn French as well. But, I realized that being at the stage where I NEED Anki for both isn't sustainable right now. I need my Japanese at a place where I can reinforce what I've learned with more data dense medium. Like books, or TV or podcasts.
In terms of volume of exposure, 45 minutes of flashcards is probably on par with 15 minutes of podcasts, or reading so long as the comprehension is near enough to 100%. And, it also means that I won't be using the same tool (Anki) for both languages. That redundancy was part of what made it hard. I was more motivated to complete the Japanese so, I often copped out on the French.
Anyway, we'll see where this goes.
I got the idea from someone else.
Anyway, it turns out that while it can be quite hard to find Japanese language materials on Amazon's Kindle store, some major titles like Harry Potter are available.
Basically, it took quite a few months, but I can handle reading a decent chunk of Japanese at a single go now. Still not fluently and not as quickly as I can English. But, enough that I can finish a decent sized manga in 2-3 sittings with relative ease. And this leaves me two options; intentionally throttle my reading down, or find something else to fill the gap.
I think you can figure out which I've chosen. Now, there are caveats, and they are much in line with my manga reading. I'm not killing myself to understand and memorize every single line. I'm certainly pushing myself to learn, but the major objective is to reinforce the living hell out of the things I have learned already.
I've been learning Japanese for over 2 years now. And it has become obvious that if the majority of what I had already learned was good and properly cemented in my head, I'd probably be able to have a crack and being reasonably conversant in Japanese. I mean, this shouldn't come as a huge surprise.
After all, while I'm not killing myself to know every single word in the manga I'm reading or in Harry Potter, I've pointed out in the past that not knowing the basic structure of the sentence or missing out on as few as 2-3 words in a sentence makes it incomprehensible. And, sometimes, a single wrong word can have this effect. So, for me to be getting through this much literature even without that in depth focus, it means I'm picking up a lot more than I'm leaving on the cutting floor.
As for why I chose to fill the gap. That is pretty simple. I've known for a while that I'm hitting the end of what Anki can do to improve my Japanese comprehension without some major investment in either making my own decks or in searching out another one. And, as a platform, it has lost its appeal to me for new things. I can tolerate it for daily practice and the current batch of new cards. But, in a year or so, I'm hoping I can start phasing Anki out completely.
To get there, I think I need to be at the same place with Audio or Video as I am with reading. So, we'll see how that goes. I'm not there yet.
The way I think I'll get there though is by reinforcing and growing that base I already have with exposure to more written material. If I can make that vocab and grammar that I can consume in written form as automatic when listening, then I should be able to start to transition away from Anki, at least for Japanese.
Basically, I still do want to learn French as well. But, I realized that being at the stage where I NEED Anki for both isn't sustainable right now. I need my Japanese at a place where I can reinforce what I've learned with more data dense medium. Like books, or TV or podcasts.
In terms of volume of exposure, 45 minutes of flashcards is probably on par with 15 minutes of podcasts, or reading so long as the comprehension is near enough to 100%. And, it also means that I won't be using the same tool (Anki) for both languages. That redundancy was part of what made it hard. I was more motivated to complete the Japanese so, I often copped out on the French.
Anyway, we'll see where this goes.
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