Luna's Learning Log

Japanese
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I think I saw them first in the のんのんびより anime (OVA?) :joy:, where a girl was “attacked“ by one of these giant flying squirrels.

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Conversation lesson today was so cool!! We wound up talking about different regions & accents, for Japan, America, and other regions, including the city I live in. Talked about different Kansai accents a bit, and we’re probly going to practice some Kansai-ben starting next lesson… which tbh I might really wanna just switch to doing that in general. My teacher’s from Osaka, coincidentally (or maybe that was something I considered when I first started taking lessons… too long ago to remember). Anyway I was shy about the possibility, but super looking forward to it (I’m such a tsundere lol). It will be cool to gain a more concrete feel for it, rather than just figuring it out on the spot. Maybe I should try to listen to some anime or podcasts with kansai-ben in the meantime, to get ready for it

Speaking of listening, I’ve been thinking I need to do more audio-only listening, and also from more diverse sources, rather than just anime. Reason being is I think my audio recognition for normal conversation & pacing is a bit on the week side. Anime voice actors speak too cleanly - which makes it an excellent resource in general - and I think I’m at a point where I need some stuff that’s a bit looser. So I guess this will be a good way to work towards that. I’ll start with this: Get comfy with Japanese Kansai-ben

Kinda took a break from reading today - not intentionally, was just busy with work, and still a little tired out from the wedding over the weekend (I’m back to normal now). But I did finally watch some anime - caught up with 薫る花は凛と咲く S1 | L22 which still feels a bit basic, but has gotten suuuuuuuper cute. It’s felt a little weird seeing my Days Watched be so empty lately, so nice to update it. Maybe I’ll watch some more tonight. And definitely will get some reading in before I go to sleep. Feels weird to have a day without reading lol.

Also I realized earlier, it’s been 3 years this month, since I first joined Natively… feels like ages ago :slight_smile:

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Oh thanks for the rec! I’m ok with Kansai ben but I know a lot of entertainers speak it and at some point I’ll want to get better at it as well.

Happy Nativersary!

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The pitch is interestingly different, l had problems to re-produce it. But otoh I also did only do like two lessons and stopped as I didn’t want to get too confused by the differences :sweat_smile:

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I’m about to give ep 1 a listen, so I’ll let you know how it goes

That makes sense… I think the intonation will be the hardest to reproduce… but if anything that might actually help me be more conscious of intonation in general. The only people I converse with out-loud are my teachers, and very occasionally a friend who is also learning… so it’s fine if I’m a bit messy. It’s the sorta thing where like “eventually I’ll work on it, but for now it’s fine” for me

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Listened to most of ep 3 & 4. My impression: her mic is too low, it’s very easy to follow, and her accent isn’t that strong, Also starting in ep 4, she follows up sections with a (very rough) English summary - which is good for comprehension check. So while it’s a bit slow/relaxed, I think it’s a good starting place. Edit: ok the English is getting pretty annoying tho

I also found ゆるい関西弁 - which is more “adult-y” and speech-dense, and has subs/transcription. Her accent is slightly thicker, and she’s generally more challenging for me to understand, and she bounces topics a lot more. Edit: her mic level is also slightly too low, and there are randomly very grating background noises that go on for too long that are making me irrationally angry :frowning:

I’ll try to listen to both regularly. Edit: idk

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Added that one as well. It looks like I’m going to be taking a Japanese class starting next month that will involve an hour bus ride, so I’m especially looking for commuting entertainment :blush:

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@bungakushoujo also rec’d:

Which is the audio book of 卍 (まんじ) | L40 - and basically old yuri with a crazy plot. It’s really working for me, in terms of interest + challenge, but YouTube is being hella buggy today

Who do manzai, mostly 関西弁, if I got that right

What class are you taking?

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oof, I’m not sure any of my interests are strong enough to get me through a L40 right now, but maybe one day(tmtmtm).

There’s a advanced Japanese class starting here locally next month. I’m kinda amazed, no one ever holds an advanced class–which is why I’m willing to take an hour bus ride, and also do a lot of crazy things in my schedule to go. I don’t entirely know what to expect, but I’m excited for it!

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I’m listening to it as a “just to see what I can get, and cream more input into my brain, see what sounds common with other clips, etc” sorta thing. Also fwiw is an Old Book. So a lot of that L40 is probably just from having old kanji. Someday I’ll properly read it, but today is not that day

That’s cool about the advanced class. Hope it goes well!

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Found a list of main characters who speak Kansai: Character List - AniDB - apparently they have tags for other dialects as well

Turns out this is on Kindle for free (I think) and Audible (same version). So that’s much more manageable than just the video. I listened to most of the first chapter without text, but when I discovered I could get it on Kindle, I went back and started listening with text.

Without text, I could hear some differences (sentence patterns/inflections and intonation), but with text I could identify waaaaay more - and that’s feeling a lot more productive. There’s some places where I can specifically contrast the intonation or rhythm to standard dialect, and others where I can tell it’s 関西弁的, but couldn’t be more descriptive. In terms of just words, I’m not quite sure why this is L40 yet. I haven’t seen any old kanji yet (I think), and the grammar and writing style feels very straightforward. Not that it would be easy - just not sure whether it’s L40 hard… But maybe I’d feel differently reading without the audiobook?

In terms of story comprehension, it’s taking all I can just to follow the words at speed, so I kind of have the gyst - and that’s enough, since I’m after the dialect rather than the content. The speed is perfect for the fact that I want to work on faster speech (it’s faster audiobook speed, and long sentences)

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Today was variously productive

Dropped

  • 乙嫁語り 1 | L24 - I’m simply getting stressed with catching up with book clubs rn, and I’d been considering it for the last few weeks
  • both Kansai-ben podcasts I mentioned. The easy one has way too much English, and it’s rough, and aggravating to sit through. The second has way too irritating background noises, to the point that I was getting angry. 残念

Anyway that’s a lot more all over the place than I want to be rn, and I realized I haven’t made any progress towards my Yurihime backlog goal. So I’ll have to double up on that in September.

I really need to set a limit for book clubs in the future. I’m not sure what it should be, but I’m thinking 3, with only one being an LN. It’s not normally a big deal for me to keep up with. But if I fall behind, bc I randomly get really into something else, catching up feels stressful. Right now, I’m over the LN limit until one of them finishes. At least with クラにか I can still discuss, since I’ve already read it

I’m on the fence about whether I should log 卍 (まんじ) | L40 since it’s with audiobook and my comprehension is a bit spotty… But then again 明日の世界で星は煌めく 3【電子書籍版限定特典SS付き】 | L28 is also with audiobook - but that’s a level I can read on my own without difficulty. Whereas まんじ is literally the highest level I’ve read/listened to. I think I’ll log it anyway - cuz like it is taking up reading time. It’s my first non-light novel, besides 吉屋信子’s stuff… Which were basically the equivalent of shoujo light novels or short story collections back then - so I don’t quite count them the same way. Same for 乙女の港.

I’m experimenting with playing 明日の世界 at 1.2x

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Found a bunch of great 関西弁 resources, and decided to make that my focus for my September listening challenge . Writing Kansai ben stuff out on my phone is proving to be tricky with auto-suggest. Wonder how long it will take to train it lol

Book progress

Got through ch 2 of 卍 (まんじ) | L40 - and as I suspected, my comprehension was being impacted by not being as awake. Still wasn’t perfect today, but felt much more solid. I checked Wikipedia plot summary to see what I missed. I’m intentionally not slowing down the audio speed, bc I want it to double as “listening to faster audio” practice

Experimented with speeding up 明日の世界で星は煌めく 3【電子書籍版限定特典SS付き】 | L28 - 1.2 is fine, 1.5 requires me to really focus. I’ll probably stick with 1.25 for now, since I have to be solid enough on the contents to comment in the club. I’ll feel a lot better once I’m caught up with this, which will take an hour or less for the rest of Ch 2, and then whatever portion of Ch 3.

関西弁講座 on YouTube + ラブ★コン

I have to say I’m really liking the intonation patterns of 大阪弁 so far. Compared to 標準語 it feels very relaxed - and also at least for the speaker I was shadowing, the articulation was kinda softer - a bit more breathy or something. Shadowing is really tiring for some reason. Everything starts feeling really mushy by the end lol. At first I thought it felt a little weird learning something so formally (rather than just passively immersing), but I’m really enjoying it. Also I think it’s helping me get a better sense of pitch accent in general

Started watching ラブ★コン S1 | L25 which is also almost totally kansai-ben

Study/Reading plan

I’m not sure how much time I should put into this 関西弁 stuff, but I guess I’ll feel it out. It’s a lot of fun so far, and btwn まんじ being broken into 8-22 minute sections, and the shadowing vids being 15-20 min each, I have a lot of easily digestible content.

ベリネデル - I think for now I’ll plan the following daily:

Obviously fine if I do more, but that’s my intended minimum

会話レッスン（標準語）

Conversation lesson went well today. Some pure talking, some image descriptions, “find the differences”, and some repeat reminders:

  • no の after な adjectives
  • だけど is for nouns and adjectives, けど is for verbs
  • Use て form

Similar expressions to “no news is good news”, that I hopefully wrote down correctly:

  • 悪いことがないのはいいことだよ
  • 変わらないのは素晴らしい

Other expressions/fragments:

  • 〇〇が一つ少ない - there’s one less (compared to something else)
  • 四角っぽい - square
  • かくかくっぽい - angular
  • いつ行った - when did you go
  • ～倍ある - twice as much

I had to hold myself back from using light Kansai-isms (ええ、やから、ほんま、etc) in my lesson. I’ve been trying to think with them more, but I feel like it would have been a bit disruptive / I’m just not used to using them, and wouldn’t want to do it until they feel organic. Otoh I should use めっちゃ more, since that’s common for standard JP. Indirectly, one of my goals is to reach a point where they just incidentally come out - the same way that when I’m speaking in English, I tend to have JP interjections

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Not nearly as common as めちゃ in standard Japanese, but it’s definitely fine to sprinkle in I’d say

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Noted. I don’t use 本当 much in the first place - so that’s a little less likely to pop into my head, if I’m not consciously thinking anyway… アホ is another one that’s “safe”. And idk maybe いかん / あかん

But anyway, this is just a me being (pointlessly) self-conscious thing… I’ll probly get over it in a week or so lol

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I, kinda embarrassingly, tend towards マジ :sweat_smile:

アホ is def safe. あかん probably also fine, although I don’t hear those ones as much I don’t think :thinking:

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I think I use マジ a decent amount as well. Tho half the time just そう？as well

アホ is actually one of the earliest slang words I learned, cuz of 暁のヨナ 1 | L27 . Don’t think I even knew about different dialects at that point

Otoh with all the Kansai shadowing, I finally have an excuse to use the final わ particle (even though it’s not quite the same as the 女らしい わ) :joy:

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I hear the ending わ creeping into young men’s speech even in a standard accent. It’s certainly not super often, but it’s not surprising to me anymore to hear it.

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ゴールの進展

:white_check_mark: 1 chapter of まんじ
:white_check_mark: 1 わかりやすい関西弁 video
:white_check_mark: Kansai textbook pages
:white_check_mark: 1 ラブ★コン S1 | L25 episode
:white_check_mark: 1 week’s assignment of 明日の世界で星は煌めく 3 - just 1 more to go!
:white_medium_small_square: Grimgar 12
:white_medium_small_square: A few pgs of まちカドまぞく

わかりやすい関西弁

文法や言い方のノーツ

難しかった

Speaking

  • 忙しい日々を送っとるで (pattern for 忙しい is HHHLL) - 〜くっとる
  • 香ばし匂いしとるやんけ

I guess I’m just not used to the とる yet, or the やんけ pattern. Also specifically coming from 〜おくっとる it feels/sounds weird to speak it

Ones I like: うちはなんも言わへん

A lot of the ones I struggle with are places where I’m just not used to the speech patterns. But also focusing on pitch + words + being in sync for a while sentence is a lot

I tend to put small breaks btwn words, where they don’t belong. おまえ面白い奴やな 面白い 奴やな. Thankfully that’s easy to practice… No different than play 8th/16th notes to a metronome, and progressively speeding up the tempo. I think in general I do this with い and お/う

文法

Under drop-down cuz it got long

いる = おる

てある = とおる or とる (何しとる what are you doing)

はる is honorific verb conjugation apparently

語尾

〜ねん is neutral and elicits response

  • 好きやねん I like it.
  • バイト辞めんねんで I’m quitting my job.

否定形

  • 〜ぁへん = 否定。〜ぇへん = 不可能
    • ex: 飲まなへん、 食べへん。
  • 〜なあかん = double negative
    • 新しい車買わなあかん
    • 新聞読まなあかん
  • 〜すらなきゃならない → 〜せなあかん

ちゃう

もうええちゃう？ Enough already

短縮形

格好いいな becomes かっこええな

ほんま、なんぼ、大きに

ほんまかいな you’re joking, right?

何度 = なんぼ

大きに = thanks (in 大阪, mostly older ppl)

イントネーションとアクセント

For 5泊形容詞, In 標準語 the pitch + emphasis seems to be LHHHHL. In 関西弁 it seems to be HHHLL a lot of the time.

One thing I’m noticing is that certain sounds are more relaxed or maybe less front of mouth or something? Like the お人やで the や sounds more like a Pataḥ than the usual qamatṣ-like sound… I’ll have to read Wikipedia at some point to get a better sense of what’s actually going on

Also there’s a lot more aspiration towards the end of sentences

他の事

偉い〇〇やなー instead of とても or 凄く？

関西弁の本を読む予定

I need to verify that some of these are actually Kansai, and not another dialect

9〜10月の関西弁漫画

舞妓さん has been on my list for ages, and ラブ★コン I’m really enjoying the anime

将来

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Daily Goal Progress

Under dropdown to save space

Aug 30

:white_medium_small_square: 1 chapter of まんじ
:white_check_mark: 1 わかりやすい関西弁 video
:white_check_mark: Kansai textbook pages
:white_medium_small_square: 1 ラブ★コン S1 | L27 episode
:white_medium_small_square: 1 week’s assignment of 明日の世界で星は煌めく 3 - just 1 more to go!
:white_check_mark: Grimgar 12
:white_medium_small_square: A few pgs of まちカドまぞく

Aug 31

:white_check_mark: 1 chapter of まんじ
:white_check_mark: 1 わかりやすい関西弁 video
:white_check_mark: Kansai textbook pages
:white_check_mark: Bunpro Kansai deck
:white_check_mark: 1 ラブ★コン S1 | L27 episode - finished ep 10
:white_check_mark: 1 week’s assignment of 明日の世界で星は煌めく 3 - caught up
:white_check_mark: Grimgar 12/13
:white_check_mark: A few pgs of まちカドまぞく - I’ve decided to drop

Book Clubs

Decided to drop https://learnnatively.com/book/bc74ea7441/ cuz it’s just not grabbing me. So that leaves me with 百合オタ、明日の世界、and クラにか for now. Then the history manga starting in two weeks. I keep eyeing 硝子の塔の殺人 🗼 Advanced Book Club - [Now reading! Week 1/10] - Book Clubs - WaniKani Community - especially (but not only) cuz I’d love to see what participating in a book club that reads at a faster pace is like. But between the Kansai goal, reading Grimgar, and the fact that 空の軌跡 is coming out in a few weeks, I’m refraining. I might try to read a bit of the book on my own… or not, who knows.

Been contemplating why exactly I get stressed out with “too many” book clubs, despite that I can read (relatively) quickly. It’s the following:

  • Too many things at once = choice paralysis
  • Expectations about participation / takes extra energy to pause to take notes, or write down things for discussion afterwards. Especially b/c I like to do more intensive posts
  • Mood switching - sometimes I’m just not in the mood for certain things. So it takes emotional energy, each time I have to push myself through something
  • Sometimes limited time

Anyway, hopefullly I can remind myself to stress less in the future.

Grimgar

Starting Grimgar 13. Continues to be really enjoyable, and feels not too difficult. I’ve decided to stop highlighting words that are just double-checks, and tbh wonder whether I should even bother highlight anything at all. Anyway this is my 2nd novel series that I’ve just read straight through like this, and I deifnitely really enjoy that. Tho it’s different than with マリみて, since that was the only thing I read for like 2 months straight, back then. Still it’s really nice to do something like this :slight_smile:

Kansai stuff

I went through a ton of the わかりやすい関西弁 vids. They’re great, but I realized they’re the sorta thing I can’t just zoom through, but like need to go over a couple of times - cuz a lot of the content didn’t quite stick. I might try writing/typing out the examples or something. And just in general remember slow & steady.

Some other kansai resources I found:

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