📚 bibliothecary's bibliophilia 📚 language log 🇰🇷 🇯🇵 🇨🇳

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Updates for my neglected languages… :smiling_face_with_tear:

:cn:
I started the web novel 德萨罗人鱼 since I noticed there’s a Korean translation of the webcomic (which I shall be reading of course), and I’ve also discovered that there’s now a radio drama!!! :heart_eyes: I’m sure I’ve come across that MissEvan site before; it seems to have quite a few BL radio dramas, and some of them have full subs, too… But I can already foresee having difficulty with the payment methods so I’m not gonna get my hopes up just yet.

I’ve been watching some of the Little Fox videos, and I understand the level 3 stories fine, but levels 4 and 5 I struggle due to my lack of vocab. I’ve just been watching the videos and having a look over the word lists afterwards, but there’s this niggling thought that I could “study” more effectively…

:jp:

I want to put a bit more effort into reading Japanese, so I’ve decided to read a chapter of 悪役のご令息のどうにかしたい日常 | L30?? every day. I also want to start using Satori Reader and YomuJP more often, as I tend to forget they exist. :sweat_smile:

I am starting to have a yearning for some grammar study though. I decided when I started learning Japanese that I was going to take a different approach than I did with Korean, and just focus on vocabulary and reading a lot to get started. Now I’m feeling ready to focus more explicitly on grammar, although I haven’t totally decided what method I want to use yet. I’ve had a quick look on Bunpro and I’m fairly confident I’m familiar with the majority of points up to and including N3, so I might just go through all the N5-N3 grammar lessons to review. As for how I’ll study grammar beyond that, I’m not sure… :sweat:

Anki

I’ve always found anki incredibly useful - so useful in fact that I tend to go overboard with it and end up drowning in reviews. I feel like a recovering addict that’s taken a break and is now looking to reintroduce it into my routine at a sensible level. I’m still at the stage of mulling things over, as I’m a bit hesitant to start again without a plan.

My vague ideas for my current languages:

  • :cn: Vocab: work through the HSK word lists
    • I feel like I know enough grammar for my current level, and it’s vocab that’s holding me back. I just need to learn lots and lots of vocab!
  • :kr: Grammar: example sentences from the KGIU books
    • I’m going with the flow regarding vocab: I’m reading what I like, and looking up words occasionally, but I don’t feel the need to memorise them - I’m just trusting that I’ll remember the words that come up often.
  • :jp: Sentences: 10k core deck, grammar deck
    • Unlike with Chinese, I feel like I need to see words in example sentences to really make them stick, and the sentences in the 10k deck probably cover most common grammar. I’ve also got a grammar deck with example sentences from DoJG and Bunpro, so I guess I can pull new cards from both.

I think it will also be helpful to remember to:

  • set leech thresholds low
  • suspend cards that aren’t useful to me
  • start with a low number of new cards, increase very slowly

I may just start with the one language and gradually build up. The key is sustainability, so I keep having to remind myself that slow and steady is the best way to go to be able to use Anki long-term.

:thailand:
I haven’t forgotten you… :sob:

I think I’ll copy out the stories in the Mannee book to remind myself where I got to, and to practice writing in Thai because that’s fun. :smiling_face:

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If you like Shin Chan and Coaltown, check out Shin Chan: Me and the Professor, it’s quite similar. Natsu-Mon 20th Century Summer Kid, is also similar but no there is no Korean version, I believe, though Chinese and Japanese are available. Chinese is sub only though. Also the Boku no Natsu series of games are by some of the same folks and quite similar as well. Although they are console onlly, and I think Japanese only.

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Thanks for the recs! I didn’t realise there was another Shin Chan game - I’ll definitely need to get that soon. :smiley:

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I’ve made a blog: Bibliothecary’s Books! :smiley:

I hope this will make it easier for me to track my progress and find things since a forum thread isn’t ideal (trying to remember how I phrased something to find it in search is a bit of a pain). Maybe I’ll be able to integrate it into Natively if On-site user blogs / language logs is ever implemented…

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Nice! I’m looking forward to reading it! :blush:
I hope you make a forum post here when you update your blog so that’s it’s easy to know when to go check for updates and chat, though :pleading_face:

The table you had with pros and cons for doing HSK based vocab lists vs customs really resonated with me because that’s been my exact logic with Korean using TOPIK materials to decide what vocab to learn for me haha.

I hope you enjoy 明日はどっちだ！I’ve read that too and it was fun. Ken is a clown and in denial. :joy:

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Ditto. I’m unlikely to check an external blog and comment unless I have a prompt here to look. Plus chatting here is nice

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Oh no. I’ve been considering making one and I’m such a copycat :joy:

Although it’s not even like I post to my language log here… why do I even want a blog?

Seconding (thirding?) the suggestion of posting blog updates here to remind us to read. :blush:

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Oh, nice! How do you find using WordPress? Easy? Hard? I’ve played around with it a bit and found it unintuitive, but I’m used to just being able to do whatever via direct coding. None of the free themes were quite what I was looking for, and I couldn’t figure out how to use their UI half the time, haha.

I’ll have to try to remember to visit once in a while, see what you’ve got going on over there.

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I just remembered something that I think is actually a pretty good fit, a rendering of the folktale, 춘향전, but in a modern setting. Your choices end up affecting the story pretty significantly, so you can choose to follow the original path or go a different way. Everything is played by actors.

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Man, I love FMV games. Always makes me happy to see one.

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I suppose I’ll have to post links here when I make a new blog post, then! :smiley:

Not as straightforward as I would have expected given how long it’s been around and how popular it is! As you say, it’s a bit unintuitive, you do have to look around a bit to find what you’re looking for. Got there eventually, though. :sweat_smile:

This looks promising! Like a choose your own adventure Kdrama edition! :star_struck:

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I think everyone here can relate. Thankfully it’s not like you have to stick to one method exclusively. Personally I ended up doing a mix of both, something like 80% vocab lists and 20% custom vocab. That way I can focus on the vocabulary that is considered important without getting too frustrated by learning words that aren’t immediately useful.

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We do get a bit of a recap, but it’s just strange that there’s all these new characters and suddenly 노리코 is so much better at the language.

sigh It’s always like this.

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I think I’ll just post short reviews on Natively from now on, with a link to the full review on my blog where I can waffle on to my heart’s content.

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I also have a love-hate relationship with Anki. My main deck has been untouched for weeks now and the earliest I plan to work through the backlog of reviews (at 100/day as that seems to be my tolerance threshold) is next month.

I’m actually planning to go into next year with very low anki goals explicitly to give myself time for other things. It’s not a race - that 2k card deck can take 2+ yrs if I need it to - maybe I’ll pick up some of them through reading anyways!

In Japanese anyways - I’ve set higher goals for Swedish on the assumption that the closer language will be less taxing on my memory :joy: Let’s see how true that ends up being.

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Oh, are you returning to study Swedish soon?

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I’m giving it another shake in the new year, but I’ll be working through a textbook and being a bit more guided in how I learn it. I’m also (hopefully) not traveling nearly so much next year which is what led to my burn out and dropping it this year. We’ll see though - about half my trips last year I didn’t know about more than a few weeks in advance :sweat_smile:

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To that end, I’m also reminding myself to:

  • set leech thresholds low
  • suspend any card that doesn’t seem useful or you just don’t like

Really like this mindset! I feel like it’s so easy to get hung up on cards thinking “oh if I just keep seeing it I’ll eventually learn it” when sometimes that’s just not true. If you see a word 20+ times and aren’t remembering it, then maybe this method of learning the word just isn’t clicking for your brain, and you’ll need to learn it in a different way or at a different time.

SRS is a super effective shotgun tool for learning and remembering a huge percentage of the stuff you throw in, but being able to accept that it can’t do everything and letting yourself get rid of the stuff it isn’t working for is a super good approach imo

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