Thank you!
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German is gonna watch you from afar waiting for you to notice him. 
We would never dare. It’s like feeding a gremlin mogwai after midnight… 
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German is staring at me from the bookshelf watching every day as I constantly pull books from Japanese 
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German sempai, notice meeee
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November 4th 
As I start up my log, I’ve made a lot of organizational and philosophical posts about my study plans and approach. Today is another one of those (kinda), but I think I’ve nailed down my plans for my current resources in the short term now. 
It’s been helpful journaling a lot of that out as I restart my study routine back up and now I’m excited about making some good progress!
Korean 
Listening & Shadowing
I did 50 minutes of listening and 15 of shadowing with some episodes of 디디의 한국문화 Podcast this morning after a few days of focusing only on Japanese listening. Coming back to Korean is honestly a bit like 
hearing is kind of a struggle, shadowing is a struggle, I sound wrong and weird but I can’t identify why?! Just need to keep practicing I guess.
Textbook Studies & Anki
Last week I posted that I was unsure of how to proceed with new cards in Anki that are based on the material I study with. After studying freestyle for a few days and developing a strategy for how I want to use my textbook, I think I’ve come up with a plan! 
As I’ve mentioned before, each chapter of 本気で学ぶ韓国語 has an ungodly amount of vocabulary (like seriously, 400~500 words per chapter feels like some kind of joke!!!) and the effort and time to get all of the words into anki, plus the time it’d take me to get through everything with a low number of daily reps just feels unsustainable for my anki habits.
So, instead of using anki for all of the words I plan to study each chapter slowly, revising the words, rereading the text, doing listening, dictation and shadowing with the text. I think all the repetition and thematic context will help me memorize most of the words naturally, and when I feel ready to move on to the next chapter I can do a sweep of words I still don’t feel 100% with (or care about lol) and add only those to Anki. This will let me attack vocabulary from several angles that are more meaningful and train a variety of skills versus a single anki card (which I find more boring than mixing up how I interact with the same content).
Other Anki Plans
On the flip side of that, though, I found a deck for キクタン韓国語上級 on quizlet that some random person out there (ありがとうございます 
) made and will be importing that into Anki using the quizlet import add-on (Do y’all know about this?! Quizlet is full of decks people made for tons of vocabulary books and they’re just waiting for yoooou) to study allll 1,150~ words slowly in a dedicated deck.
Japanese and Korean Mix 
Vocabulary, Handwriting, Pitch & Phonetics
I ended up doing some dedicated study today with キクタン韓国語上級 too, by the way! And I think I’ll incorporate it into my learning rotation going forward for these reasons:
- Writing the Korean words by hand and then the Japanese translation lets me practice both my Korean and Japanese handwriting.
I’ve dabbled in learning ペン字 in the past and studying how to write kanji formally, and then I’ve done a lot of informal writing by writing all the translations and example sentences from my Korean textbooks out by hand and it’s helped a ton, but I could always do more and get better! 
The vocabulary in キクタン韓国語上級 is advanced, so I’ll get the chance to write a lot of Kanji I’ve never written by hand before (and internalize more of those good kanji - hanja connections…) and develop my kanji writing micro skills (like radical balance, hane, tome etc).
-
Writing the phonetic pronunciation as listed in the textbook will help me internalize patchim and sound change rules further! It also means I am always keeping awareness of the pronunciation behind the visual representation of the word in Hangul in the back of my mind. (Example: 날조 → 날쪼)
-
I can learn new and study Japanese vocabulary at the same time too!
I feel like I know a lot of Japanese vocabulary words already, but I always find new ones in Korean resources. Today it was
골찌 - びり: dead last, last place
I knew 最下位 but not this word
낭패를 보다 - 不覚を取る: to suffer an abject failure or defeat
- Hearing the Korean → Japanese → Korean pronunciation helps me develop an awareness of the contrast between the two and therefore an understanding of the characteristics of each.
I kind of just use Japanese pronunciation for Korean words sometimes as a fallback because certain sounds are similar, but then they really aren’t! 
Today for example, I had the word 기미, which is basically a homophone for the Japanese word 君。But, it doesn’t sound exactly the same. Why not?!? I don’t know yet since I’m still not that experienced with Korean but I’M CURIOUS!!! and want to slowly find out.
It also makes for good ear training to recognize pitch. Korean words have a consistent pitch patterns based on the number of syllables and what consonant a word starts with, so it gives me a baseline to compare and contrast the Japanese pitch I hear against. Hopefully this will help me actually get better at hearing it (I swear I’m only reliable at hearing it like 60% of the time ).
- Last but not least, it’s just puuuuuure vocabulary study, which I love, with my two favorite languages!
And it’s fun! The more Korean I learn, the more I learn about Japanese too and I just deepen my knowledge and intuitive understanding of both of these great languages. 
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Your love of languages is reaaaally inspiring, I love reading your updates! Very impressed by your consistency and methodical approach. Each update of yours is a boost in motivation 
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I appreciate the kind words and that you enjoy reading all my rambles!!! 
That makes ME motivated! 
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November 5th
I had a really busy day today. 
So, a lot of my learning activities were done on the go while I was doing other stuff because I don’t let anything stand in the way of me and language time!
Korean
Listening: 1 hour
Shadowing: 1 hour
Vocabulary (キクタン韓国語上級): Reviewed day 8, 9, and studied day 10
All-purpose textbook (本気で学ぶ韓国語上級): Vocabulary from section 5.7
————————
I did one hour of both (!) listening and shadowing today with Didi의 한국문화 Podcast and the audio that goes with the words I learned yesterday in キクタン韓国語上級 in via the booco app.
I actually spend 45 minutes just shadowing the キクタン韓国語 words, following the actual method proposed by the textbook where you vibe to the corny beat and repeat aloud and it went so hard y’all. All those words are pretty much burned into my memory now and I think I’ll hear them in my sleep, which I wouldn’t mind.
I happen to have an extremely long commute (2 hours round trip everyday, baby), so I’m definitely going to incorporate these audio tracks into my car listening materials rotation to help pass the time while stuck in traffic. I’m thinking:
- Write the words by hand first to practice handwriting and get some kind of tactile memory
- Listen to the audio for the words while reading the book
- Listen to the audio for the sentences while reading the book
- Listen to just the audio for the words while shadowing the next day without the book to review
- Listen to the sentence audio and shadow selected sentences that give me trouble
- Review in anki slowly
I also finished the vocabulary from section 7 of the chapter I’ve been working through in 本気で学ぶ韓国語, so I’m ready to focus on reading it deeply and working with the audio starting from tomorrow I think!
Korean & Japanese Mix
Today’s 속담 / 諺:
I’ve decided I’m going to share whatever one I learn that day from my textbook for fun cuz I love idioms 
친구 따라 강남 간다 : to give into peer pressure
牛にひかれて善光寺参り : doing or receiving something good by accident or through the invitation of someone els
What is with the Japanese idiom they picked to be the equivalent? 
A lot of Korean and Japanese idioms are basically the same, but this one isn’t even remotely close. Thank goodness I look them up on my own to be sure.
Shadowing
The vocabulary audio tracks from キクタン韓国語 just has single words in KR > JP > KR and it’s giving me an opportunity to do a type of shadowing that I haven’t done at all in the last two months: shadowing of individual words! All the shadowing I’ve done has been along with long form content, so this is kind of a new challenge for me.
When you’re only saying one word, the bar you need to clear suddenly becomes much higher because all of the context you normally get from the meaning or intonation at a sentence level isn’t there. I’ve definitely had experiences speaking to Japanese people (or actually Korean people too for that matter lol) where I’ve said individual words and they’ve been like “??” because the word didn’t register to them. That’s kind of a clue for me that my pronunciation it wasn’t quite right enough for whatever reason to immediately get parsed.
Because of those experiences, it kind of feels worthwhile practice. People always say learn words in context! And I think that can be said about pronunciation too, but let’s think of this like some kind of strange exercise you do at the gym to train obscure micro muscles that the normal big weights don’t get to.
Anyways, the shadowing today made me realize I’m not great at words that end in ん. It’s hard to get a crisp sound that’s nasal enough. Wah. I think I’m gonna zoom in and really focus on it when it shows up in translations of Korean vocabulary words I’m learning.
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っで、そのイディオムは何ですか？
I’ve noticed this too. Though my only verbal speaking experience is with my teachers, who thankfully are good at figuring out what I’m trying to say
When you look up/learn Korean words, are you checking K-K, K-JP, K-EN, or some combination of the three?
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It was also in my post! 牛に引かれて善光寺参り 
Most of the time it is KR -JP because I find a lot of vocabulary to be similar and it’s easier to remember sino words if I see the hanja/kanji. My phone and tablet are in English though, so if I read ebooks on them my pop up dictionary is in EN.
Sometimes I check both KR-JP and KR-EN and the translations are pretty different…it’s a sign that dictionary entries and translations are all just approximations and it’s best to develop an intuitive for a word through repeated exposure anyways (I think we all know this). But, a dictionary lookup still gives a good idea of the general sense of how the word is used!!
I almost never use KR-KR at the level I’m at, but maybe one day. I actually did not start regularly using a JP-JP dictionary for a very long time after I started reading and even now still frequently use JP-EN for lookups on my phone haha. 
I can kind of tell when a definition feels off and I need to go searching for it in a JP-JP dictionary by this point, though…
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This makes me feel better!
I tried to go J-J a bunch of times but noticed that frequently it’s just enough friction to keep me from wanting to read as much that even if it’s “suboptimal”, it’s probably better for me this way since it’s actually getting me to do more reading.
Occasionally I will hit a word that just feels vague and/or the English definition doesn’t really explain enough, so I do have a J-J dictionary hidden by default in my yomitan for those words.
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There is all this hype over “the monolingual transition” and whatnot but I say do your own thing if you’d like to as long as you feel happy with your progress lol 
if not it’s a good time to challenge yourself but I think there are no musts!
I never really tried hard to go monolingual because the few times I used a Japanese dictionary when my level was still lower I was like “hmm this is hard to understand and annoying to read” so I just used the English one on my kindle for a long time. Eventually I read so many books that random Japanese stopped being hard to understand and annoying to read, though, then I naturally transitioned.
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I feel like for some words the Japanese definition just makes so much more sense. I have some anki cards where I removed the English and replaced it with the Japanese definition because it had the nuance needed for things to click.
I also echo what you’ve said about not needing to go monolingual all the time. My iPad kind of forces me to be monolingual (I think because I set the device language to Japanese my integrated dictionary generally doesn’t give me English definitions) but I’ll use whatever is convenient on whatever device I’m on and don’t think bilingual definitions hurt, especially for words with straightforward meanings. Ex: I’d rather see 栗 translated as ‘chestnut’ than “ぶな科の落葉高木。また、その実。秋、いがに包まれた実がなる。材は堅く、家屋の土台、車などに使う。”
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November 6
Korean
Listening: 1 hour (375.06/500 hours)
Shadowing: 30 minutes
Vocabulary: Days 11 + 12 of キクタン韓国語上級
General Textbook Study: 本気で学ぶ韓国語上級 Chapter 5.7 Reading
Did another 1 hour of listening today with a mix of Didi의 한국문화 Podcast and the audio from キクタン韓国語. While bored and stuck in traffic, I listened to the audio for the next day of キクタン韓国語 without reading any of the words first to see what I could recognize just by ear, but the results were awful. When I got home I ended up checking the spelling of the words in the book versus what I thought I heard and I think I got like 12/16 of them wrong.
I was able to make a mental connection between some of the words, what the Japanese translation is and what the hanja must be, and how it kinda may be spelled but I just didn’t have enough familiarity with the words or hanja being used to be able to hack my way.
It means I definitely need to keep doing dictation exercises when I can (perhaps on the weekend?) to train my ability to hear minimal pairs better.
Korean & Japanese Mix
Todays 속담・諺:
: 산 넘어 산
: 一難さってまた一難
I think the meaning of these are both transparent but the translation would be something like “one thing after another”
Vocabulary
I actually did not even understand all of the Japanese translations in isolation either, but in my defense a lot of the words are just so advanced! One of the words from day 11 was 도태・淘汰, which I think I only picked up in Japanese during the last year or so. キクタン韓国語上級 goes so hard, I’m telling you all! 
One thing that’s been awesome about learning Korean with Japanese resources in general, though, is that it teaches me so much new Japanese so it’s constantly like two for the price of one. For example, today I learned:
단비 - 恵みの雨, “long awaited rain”
I could’ve guessed the Japanese based on context but it’s interesting to know that there is a set phrase to describe that concept. Super whacky choice of a vocabulary word to teach, though. I am wondering if it is used more frequently in Korean in some kind of figure of speech and was therefore worth including in my textbook? I’ll have to keep a curious eye and ear out.
Self-feedback
I posted last week about consciously looking for ways to assess how I’m doing (instantly if possible, but in general) to give myself feedback. Today I experimented with a neat way to quiz myself and get feedback on vocab recall and pronunciation!
Basically, I let the Korean audio in キクタン韓国語 (which goes KR, pause, JP, pause, KR) play and didn’t shadow but instead tried to recall the Japanese definition and say it with the correct pitch at the same time as the Japanese audio, and then tried to say the Korean audio at the same time as the last Korean audio. To reformulate that so that it makes more sense, what I did was listen to the first Korean word, say the Japanese translation in unison, and then say the Korean word in unison.
I went back and did this with the audio for the words I learned earlier in the week for review and it let me test:
- Did I even understand the Korean?
- Did I recall the Japanese translation after understanding the Korean?
- Did I say the Japanese word correctly
- Did I say the Korean word correctly
Since 3 & 4 are done in unison with the audio, it’s really easy to hear if the pitch or something else is off. 1 & 2 let me practice listening and recall (3 does in a way too for recalling pitch), and all together it’s a nice way to get understand how well I am understanding all these words (yay self-feedback). I think it will also be a nice way to let me slowly tackle that problem I mentioned yesterday with it being hard to pronounce individual words correctly. It’s also a really great way to pass time when you are stuck in traffic!
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Ohhhh yeah, hate monolingual definitions of plants, fruits, animals, or anything related to Buddhism.
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すみません、The two expressions were so different, I didn’t connect that they were related 
I kinda appreciate them in their own way… but they’re not all that useful when you just need to know what thing actually is
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I was surprised too that my book chose that as the Japanese equivalent because they’re basically not related at all
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November 7th
It’s almost the end of the week and I’m running out of steam after a couple of long work days. 
I didn’t really have the energy for a lot of dedicated study sitting at my desk with a textbook, paper and pencil today, but I still got some learning in.
Korean
Listening: 1:50 hours (376.89/500 hour goal)
Shadowing: 20 minutes
Vocabulary: キクタン韓国語上級 (Day 13/70)
I did a new lesson in キクタン韓国語 and reviewed the lessons from earlier in the week with the listen + quizzing method I wrote about yesterday in my log.
Today’s 속담 ・諺:
비 온 뒤에 땅이 굳어진다
雨降って地固まる
The translation is literally, after it rains the ground strengthens - so it means something like hard times make you stronger! Today the phrase is basically identical in both Korean and Japanese.
I also spent about 2 hours doing some reading for fun. 
Kind of unrelated to studying, but today on my way home from work I saw a massive flock(murder?) of thousands and thousands of crows flying around around twilight. I’ve never seen so many in my life at one time, I almost wondered if some kind of natural disaster was about to happen! They were also super loud! I could hear them through my car, so I cracked the window and it was almost deafening how loud they were screaming. Super strange even in my otherwise normal and boring life haha.
It did inspire me to look up the word for crow or カラス in Korean though since I didn’t know it. It is 까마귀! And a flock (murder?!) is 까마귀떼. Sometimes it’s nice to look up random things you’re curious about from your day. 
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Crows are a murder, yep. Flock is acceptable, I guess, but why use the boring word when you can have the fun one?
Have some crow memes:
Also, crows are corvids:
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I witnessed a very extreme murder today, then. 
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