I like the Shirabe app on iOS. It’s offline so really fast for look ups, and the handwritten kanji look ups work well.
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On Android I mostly rely on Akebi handwriting search. Very few kanji I can’t draw and it recognises (eventually). For the few that don’t I just use the radical stroke order search.
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A bit of an update and wrap-up on the month of May. I ended up getting Covid again at the end of last week, so my physical and mental health haven’t been the best. Hopefully I’ll recover better and faster than the other two times and this won’t be too much of a setback, but at this point, there’s no way for me to know.
I ended up not really doing anything for language learning in the past couple days, as doing just about anything was already too much. I even went on vacation mode for WaniKani. I was planning as well to do some Spanish and at least a little of Italian to complete the month, but well, that didn’t happen. So I’m just hoping that both my brain and body will cooperate in the coming months, we’ll see.
Korean
I was planning on finishing 죽이고 싶은 아이 | L25 , but I’m only halfway through. I’ll try to at least finish it before this book club starts the next book if I can.
Looking back, I managed to finish two books: https://learnnatively.com/book/e262ad83be/ and 우리는 조구만 존재야 | L22.
Almost 20 hours dedicated to Korean in May, which is lower than the previous month, but it makes sense as I started Japanese. I should probably diversify my time and allocate more time to other activities than reading though. I spent so little time on everything else that the pie chart isn’t even bothering to break it down other than reading and other
.
I’ve gone from 20% of pages of L20-26 in April to 26%, so I’m counting it as a win. One day, hopefully, L27-33 will surpass that. So far, I’m at a total of 6551 pages read.
Japanese
Japanese has been going really well this month. WaniKani has been going smoothly, although I couldn’t really test to see if my strategy of doing radicals first worked, as I ended up using vacation mode for a couple days, so I’ll see how that goes for the next level.
As for reading, I ended up reading 226 pages on Natively, which I’m quite happy about. It was mostly Tadoku free graded readers (up to L6), but I also tried reading some of スーと鯛ちゃん 1 | L12 and 泣きたい夜の甘味処 | L18 . Keyword is try, I was struggling a lot, but it was nevertheless fun.
Outside of Natively however, I read the second volume of Crystal Hunters! I’ve also read the first 6 chapters of 遠くにある夢. It’s been more deciphering than reading, but it’s been simple enough so far that I can slowly go through it with a lot of lookups.
I’m also slowly going through Tokini Andy’s Genki 1 playlist, just to get a taste of the grammar. At this point, I’ve realized that a lot of concepts are familiar enough to Korean so that with an explanation and then just exposure, I should be able to gradually learn the grammar. I’m up to Lesson 4.
I’m hoping that all this preparation will get me ready for WaniKani’s ABBC on June 15th. I’m not expecting to read smoothly of course, but well, I’ll see if it’s doable and if I can keep up with the pace.
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Soooo, it’s been a while. You’ll notice from my last update, things were already not going great, what with me getting sick with COVID again. My health has suffered from it, so I’ve been slowly recovering for the last couple months. I’ve also been told by my doctor that learning lots of languages at the same time while researching anything and everything to the point of exhaustion is not helpful to manage chronic fatigue. Which makes sense, and it’s not that I hadn’t thought of that, I just have a really hard time dialing myself and my brain down.
That’s why I ended up stepping away from Natively for a bit. You all are just way too motivating for me to be able to even hang out on the forum without wanting to read lots and lots of books 
. And I mean that as a compliment of course, this is more of a me problem. (I am also planning on seeing some specialist to confirm whether I am neurodivergent, which at this point I’m almost certain I am, I’m just not sure how.) Ironically I ended up diving deep into genealogy instead, but at least that’s slightly less tiring than language learning (except when I’m trying to read Italian records, but that’s beside the point 
).
Korean
While I admittedly haven’t done that much language learning, I spent the most time on Korean. The one thing I’ve probably done more in the past couple months than before is listening. I’ve been listening to a couple ebooks, watching more dramas with Korean subs, watching youtube videos, and I can feel that my listening comprehension skills have gotten a lot better. I’ve been particularly enjoying 김노아 videos, that’s one channel I can’t recommend enough, it’s hilarious.
On the reading side, I did finish 심청전 | L27??, so there’s that. I’ll probably be attempting the read the C2 one as well soon (for now, since another A2 one came out, I’ll read that, that way I can eventually complete the whole series). I also just decided today to go back and read 보라색 치마를 입은 여자 | L27?? , that I’d stopped a while ago. And it’s crazy how much easier it is now, I can just read it comfortably with a couple lookups here and there. I’m also almost halfway through 드라큘라 | L25 , which I’m reading comfortably apart from the occasionnal very grammar heavy sentence (didn’t know about -자니 but it seems like it’s used a lot in there, so by the time I finish it hopefully I’ll no longer have any trouble understanding that grammar point).
Now, a weird thing that I’ve noticed is that my speaking and writing have gotten widly better than they used to be. I don’t know exactly how, maybe it’s just that I needed time to absorb everything, input first output second, but yeah, that happened. So I can now firmly say that I am intermediate without feeling self conscious about my formerly… questionnable speaking/writing level.
Italian
I haven’t been going as strong with Italian as I’d planned at the beginning of the year, but well, life happens. I have however started to read an actual novel, Novecento. Un monologo, slowly but surely. I still have more graded readers to read as well. But yeah, so far, between Spanish, French and Latin, Italian has been going smoothly (and I’m wondering if I honestly might just get away with not studying grammar at all, just doing lots of input, I’ll see).
Japanese
Now, sad news for Japanese, I ended up stopping Wanikani while I was recovering. So I’m gonna have to start back up from pretty much zero. I’ll say, the closest thing to kanji practice I’ve gotten in the last couple months has been through the random encounter of hanja characters. I did end up buying Genki I, I wasn’t really sold on the whole idea of using a textbook but as it turns out, just TOKini Andy Genki videos were not enough for me, so hopefully it’ll be a nice support.
Spanish I’ve barely done anything for in the past couple months (apart from a tiny bit of reading and a series or two, but yeah, just that isn’t gonna help me improve).
I also haven’t tracked any of my language learning time lately, and I think I probably won’t start that again, as it’s getting too confusing with the mix of languages. While I like seeing my stats, it also takes me a lot of energy to remember to track every time, so at this point I feel like it’s more trouble than it’s worth. I might just occasionnally track reading speed through natively though, just to see whether I’m getting faster.
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welcome back!
the magic of a break(ish)! stoked things are going well with your kr, seems like you’ve found some adjustments that work better with your health too which is always good. 
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Hey there. We missed you on the second half of Bestias but glad to hear things are improving for you. Definitely agree that hanging out here can be a bit overly motivating at times!
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I have also just experienced… all of this…
Hope you’re feeling a bit better now! 
It’s tough when your brain/body doesn’t do what you want it to, but it seems like you’ve made great progress with Korean!
I didn’t realise; one more book to add to by TBR!
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I just read your study log update as well, and what you were saying also felt strangely familiar.
But also, it makes sense, I remember that poll of “who are we” we did a while ago, and looking back, only 57% (of 84) said they thought they were neurotypical, which is nowhere close to average estimates around the world.
Yeah, sorry for bailing out on you all. I haven’t even finished it, and at this point I probably should. For Spanish, I think I’ll probably take it slow, do what I feel like doing, and go from there.
I’d heard about how taking a break can improve your language learning, but it’s not something I’d ever experienced 
.
I’ll admit I’m still struggling with not overdoing everything, but at the very least I’m more aware of it and cautious now.
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Haha it’s confirmed, it’s a multiverse and we are all just variants of the same person here. 
I said it on another thread but welcome back! When I’ve had experiences like that too, I always try to just view them as part of my journey that helped me become a better and more resilient learner who knows her limits better. So, I’m sure that time off was really helpful for you too if not only for the sake of getting to recharge! 
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Welcome back 
I hope you feel better soon as well, chronic fatigue can really hold you back from things so hopefully you’re on the mend now.
Glad to hear that the break seems to have done you good as well and you’ve seen improvements in your languages too.
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November 1st
Lots of good thing this month! I mainly focused on Korean, and while I said I was going to be listening more, I ended up listening less and reading more than I ever have in a month! Sooo, not a failure, just a shifted goal . Although I do kind of know why that happened, I told myself I would do listening when commuting, except listening is tiring so I ended up mostly either not doing anything or reading instead during that time.
Korean books!
Now, on another good note, I have finally reached the level I set out starting Korean to get to! That is, being able to read mangas/webtoons! I hadn’t done it a lot previously, because if I’m going to have to do a lot of lookups and read super slowly anyway I might as well read a book instead, buuuuut this month I had a lot of success in reading mangas! Particularly through @bibliothecary 's suggestions, I figured why not since a lot of them had the first volume free on Ridibooks, and it was great! I ended up reading 바람의 저편 01권 | L26, 아저씨와 고양이 1 | L18 and 이누야샤 1 | L21.
In addition, I started reading 스파이 패밀리 Spy Family 1 | L18?? and LOVE 러브 콤플렉스 1 | L24?? which are both nice. Spy x family is hard, but considering it’s L29 on Japanese Natively, yeah, that explains it. It’s absolutely wild to me that it was added as a temporary L18?, but well, that’s about to change as soon as I finish reading that first volume and grade it!
Lovely Complex I actually used to read as a child. It’s kind of funny to think that I’m now taller than Koizumi, considering the whole premise is based on her being absurdly tall. I may actually have the books somewhere in French, I just don’t know if I took them with me when I moved so they might be lost forever 
. But hey, that can’t stop me from reading the Korean version instead!
I also dived into the 그림 에세이 category on Yes24, where I found 기분 좋아지는 책 | L22. I started a list for that that I will be adding to. There’s something about this, like a manga but along with that philosophical feel to it, of introspection and self love. Add to that interruptions in the form of author ramblings on the most random topics, and there you go, that’s pretty much what you can expect from this category.
Another thing that I read this month is 땡땡의 모험 13 | L28??! I’d started it in December of last year but kind of dropped it because my reading speed was abysimal and even with lookups I was having trouble understanding a lot of what was happening. Ten months later, rereading this from the beginning, it was so much easier! Sure, I still did some lookups, because I’m not familiar with archeology vocab, but I read it so much more quickly and got a lot more out of it. I’ll probably be ordering some more of this series at some point, maybe for Christmas since that way I’ll be able to justify that purchase better .
I also ended up randomly stumbling upon 나, 여기 있어요 | L28?? and decided to read it. I loved it, but I would really recommend at least checking the trigger warnings first. Let’s just say I was not at all prepared for what happened (but at least the author does give some warnings… 50 pages in). I won’t say much to avoid spoilers, but it really gives a great view on some parts of society that often remain hidden, which is very much by design as it shows.
Now, in terms of actual novels, I’m hoping to finish 드라큘라 | L25 soon. I’ve actually been reading it solely when waiting before my physiotherapy appointments, which makes lookups annoying so I often don’t. I can’t remember who it was that has spa books I thinks, or something along those lines, but it’s pretty much like that.
I quickly read 고양이 해결사 깜냥 1 | L20, which was okay (but definitely a great ressource for language learners, I would’ve loved to have picked it up a few months ago). And sure, it has a few drawings and sparse pages, but that doesn’t matter because I can officially say that I managed to get a reading speed above 1 minute per page! 1.36 pages/minute to be precise. Now I just need to be able to do the same for full on YA or adult books…
I am more motivated than ever to branch out to more difficult books and unfamiliar types of books. I picked up some poetry book, https://learnnatively.com/book/fa8789e9d9/, and loved it. I also started reading 12시간 뒤 1권 | L26??, which is one of my favorite lightnovels. So far so good, but I’ll see if that changes when the finance vocab starts coming in.
As you can imagine, with all that reading, my Korean stats have been very good. In terms of pages, I read a total of 2033 pages! That puts me at over 9000 pages read for Korean on Natively, which I really happy about. I should hit 10k pages in November, so I’m excited for that. But what I’m even more impressed by is the levels graph. A simple side by side tells so much about how much I’ve improved in the past months. Technically my largest level category is still L13-19, but not for long. And if you add up the two higher leveled ones, the difference is staggering!
From my April 30th post
vs now
On another note, I will be restarting Wanikani from scratch this month. I’d stopped it during my break this summer, and at this point, I’ve forgotten so much that I might as well restart it, it’s not like I was that far along anyway.
I got some new Spanish books, so I’m hopping to actually read some Spanish this month, we’ll see what ends up happening but I have the full version of Don Quijote just waiting for me. Hopefully it’ll be easier than when I tried reading it as a high B1 at best (and even that’s generous). I also got some books from Javier Castillo, the original author of the book the series La chica de nieve Limited Series | L34??, which I really enjoyed, is based on.
Hilariously, I’m realizing that I’ve been watching too many episodes of German series lately so I’m starting to naturally pick up a lot 
. I very much recommend Dark | L30??. I won’t be turning it into a core language any time soon, but hey, a lot of my friends speak German, so it’s about time some stuck. At least I should be able to understand a certain friend better the next time she gets drunk.
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Seeing the size of my post, I’m realizing I ended up rambling a lot. Oups
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That’s a nice way to reframe things! I’ll have to remember it for next time… 
Woohoo! 
It’s a nice level to be at, since 만화 are generally more interesting than children’s books (or at least the ones aimed at younger readers) and there’s a huge amount of choice.
And the children’s books <L20 are pretty well graded I think, so between us I’m sure we can flesh out the 만화 portion of Korean Natively over the next few months! Hopefully Brandon will use some of them as benchmarks for even more accuracy, since there’s a lot of translated manga available.
I was a big fan of the series when I was younger, too! I’m hoping to get around to it soon to revisit the hilarity of the main couple’s constant bickering.
That’s the nice thing about posting in your own learning log, you can ramble as much as you want without bothering anyone! 
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Definitely. Some children books are nice (이상한 과자 가게 전천당 | L20 is a great example of that) but a lot of them are just meh. Sometimes I wonder how this is even a category of books, how are people actually enjoying these, but I guess I’m the outlier here, I never did read many children’s books and jumped straight to the teens and YA category.
I was thinking about the implications of us reading a lot of the same 만화 for Natively, instead of mostly different ones. But hey, it means that the gradings will be that much more accurate, so that’s good!
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Oh my gosh, that’s so many books!! Congrats on your level up!
Man, I would love to read Don Quixote in the original. Pretty sure that would require me to actually study my Spanish, though. ;_;
It’s great to see so much more momentum with Korean books; I hope you guys can read all the books you want, both same and different ones!
On that note, don’t forget to add a tag or two as you go along! Just since there’s been so much discussion around those lately, and HopeWaterfall even mentioning trigger warnings and such for the one book.
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I definitely should add more tags. It’s not something I generally think of doing, whereas I usually try to leave a review but tags I just… forget about. I guess it’s because I don’t really ever use them. I’ll try to go back to past reads and add some at the very least, but no garantee that I’ll remember to add them to future books I read
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Oo, I just bought El cuco de cristal | L30?? yesterday. I’d been eyeing this one up for a while but it was always in a fairly expensive large softback edition. Found it in a more normal sized paperback yesterday. I also bought it in Màlaga which is where the author is from which added a little extra touch for me!
Looking forward to reading this one, probably starting towards the end of the year.
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Congratulations on the progress!
and with fear of hijacking the thread …
… I’m deeply jealous
and …
I tried and failed to read the first page maybe 6 months ago. About a month ago I managed to get through that single page unscathed but decided it was best to quit while I was ahead. Maybe next year, late next year, we can start a Don Quixote support group.
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At the time, I barely managed to struggle through the first chapter not really understanding much. I would’ve given up earlier, but it was a school assignement so I didn’t really have a choice. I then had to struggle through some version of Lazarillo de Tormes (surely it wasn’t this one, La vida de Lazarillo de Tormes y de sus fortunas y adversidades: 5 NOVELERIA | L43, or there’s no way I could’ve managed it).
I got that one as well! I also ended up buying El juego del alma | L30??, which I think will be closer to the style of La chica de nieve (Best Seller) | L27. Somehow that one I can never find in a library though, so I will continue looking (or cave and eventually just order it online, we’ll see which one comes first).
Please do, I don’t mind
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For the first time in a long time, today’s update is focused on Japanese! As planned, I completely reset Wanikani. I’d forgotten how slow the start was, but at least it let me get back into it slowly. This time, I also decided to use the Jitai script for different fonts during reviews. Considering what I’ve seen in the mangas I’ve been reading recently in Korean, I want to be as prepared as I can possibly be for that. So yeah, Wanikani has been going smoothly and I’m back to level 2. So far, this was mostly stuff I remembered, but at least 上 which I kept getting the kanji reading wrong last time I no longer have trouble with, so I’m glad I ended up going back to here. Plus, it’s a clean slate for my stats.
On the topic of horrendous fonts
Seriously, I was reading Lovely Complex and came across this. Is this font called I wrote this using my opposite hand? How is it so bad? I can kind of read it, but it involves way too much guesswork to be comfortable.
Not to mention 이누야샤 with its questionnable font use for the monster lady.
For grammar, I don’t know if I’ve mentionned it before but I did end up getting Genki 1 after all. I’m realizing that at least for this beginner grammar, everything is so similar in concept to Korean that I can just read through it quickly and everything makes sense. For Korean, it didn’t, so I ended up spending lots of time just rereading the textbook explanations, and that’s what made me turn to video courses in the first place, but I’m realizing that it’s perfect for Japanese. I’ve already read through the first two chapters of Genki 1 and will be steadily continuing.
Now, on the topic of vocabulary, I’ve decided to start an Anki deck to supplement Wanikani. I finally managed to set up Yomichan so that it’s connected to an Anki deck in a way that I don’t hate. It’s still not optimal, but it’ll do. I started reading N5 articles from watanoc.com again (this one and that one). I’ve begun mining some kana words, that way when I actually start reading I won’t have a mountain of them preventing me from understanding things.
A little Korean update as well. I’ve started going through Korean Grammar In Use Intermediate. I know most of the grammar in there already, so I’m just picking the ones I somehow haven’t learned. I am also doing a more complete readthrough at the same time, but slower, with the study group on Go Billy’s discord server. Funnily enough, some of those grammar points I review, and then immediately come across a similar grammar point that isn’t the one covered. Like, I reviewed ㄹ 텐데 and ㄹ 테니까 and saw ㄹ 테지만. I also reviewed 기는 하지만 just to come across 기는 한데 . So yeah, grammar is messing with me but other than that I’m doing great. I am aiming to move on to the advanced textbook for next year, I’m curious to see how much I already know.
The more I get into advanced grammar, the more I’ve been struggling to actually find good ressources (or any ressources really, when all I can find is a hinative page, a naver page in indonesian and a video in burmese, what am I meant to do?). I did find two playlists for advanced grammar that seem nice, one by 긴광순 and another by 임준 선생님 from TOPIK STUDY. If anyone knows of other good ressources for advanced grammar, let me know.
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