How's your language learning going this week? - Weekly thread (Aug 23)
Do your best everyone!
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Syndicated from the fediverse. Read and engage on the original instance.
View original on lemmy.worldDo your best everyone!
12 replies
Finally got my hands on my childhood holy grail.
When the sequel to my favorite game didn't get translated back in 2005, that became my villain origin story. I convinced my parents to sign me up for Japanese classes on the weekend just so I could play it. But it turned out learning a foreign language was hard and I had too much actual schoolwork to keep up with, so I didn't get all that far.
But now that I'm trying to learn again on my own, I've decided it's time to tackle this one. Took me almost an hour and a half to get through the opening cutscene, but with the help of OCR and a dictionary I understood nearly all of it. Made 30 new vocab flashcards out of it in the process.
Unfortunately my old GBA SP is not holding much charge, I may need to find a new aftermarket battery replacement. And the game's signature gimmick gets in the way of OCR, it already takes several tries to read the pixel font and it's even harder to recognize while playing outside.
I had no idea (or had forgotten) that a third game existed!
Really wanted to like the first game as a kid, but the sun thing did hold me back. Liked the idea of playing outside, but in practice I didn't feel like doing it much. And by the time I got a GBA SP, seems like I'd end up leaning over the system in a way that made it hard to get sun, too.
Might be too evil to say it, but I think if I go back to (1 & 2) these days, I might look for some kind of GameShark or whatever code to just keep sun on. <.<
Nice! (It's 新・ボクらの太陽 逆襲のサバタ if anyone wants to look it up.)
Dating myself here, but I got the Famicom Mini version of the original Legend of Zelda ages ago when I was in Japan. Learned the horrors of all-katakana scripts for the first time.
It actually wasn't until last year that I got comfortable enough with my kanji and I started seeing shapes instead of strokes that I realized how they got away with the characters being so pixellated back then.
Thanks, it can be really hard to read the stylized writing (although at least the alt-text is accessible). To add on to that, for anyone lazy, it's the Japanese name for Boktai 3! And if you're not familiar with Boktai, it's a series of GBA games that use a solar sensor as a primary mechanic.
Continuing my grabbag method of language learning.
Today: started learning preterite in portuguese by brute forcing linguno. I started with the 11 verbs I knew in the present, but it got too frustrating, so I pared it down to five and started adding more as I learned.
Also: Made some cards for the passive construction in Spanish. There's lot of stuff I just understand without thinking about it, but need to study consciously to reproduce.
Taking things slowly still. Only doing 30 mins study on both Japanese and Spanish, but also started doing more immersion with my Japanese and Spanish at 30 mins bare minimum each too. Started working on my Irish again, doing 30 mins, but no immersion. Sometimes it's a lot longer though since a grammar video is 40 minutes and I still need to do flashcards and etc.
Someone recommended BuraBura Japanese, and been binging their videos. It's been really good craic. Spanish is Dreaming in Spanish, and then, as I said, Irish still not advanced enough to get the benefit out of immersion so still need to study for a good long time. Using Madra Teanga for my Irish, it's becoming a lot more fleshed out now so I added it to my dailies.
Realised despite all the efforts in languages, I can't actually do much output at all, so will need to try output practise at some point, but no idea where. Spanish with the GF I suppose, but Irish and Japanese? No idea.
Been researching production platforms myself lately since I'll be shifting my focus to that around the turn of the year. The people I've talked to recently tell me italki or Preply are the way to go if you're serious about it. HelloTalk and Tandem are a step down, I hear.
VRChat's also supposed to be an option.
From personal experience Tandem really depends on who you end up talking to, at its core it's just a chat app. Italki and Preply are more for finding an actual teacher.
The problem I also face is crippling social anxiety. I can manage with keyboard/messages okay, but when it comes to voice I'm for whatever reason absolutely terrified. So for instance if I did end up finding someone to talk to in Japanese or etc, I'd have to get to know them first through keyboard before I feel comfortable enough verbally talking to them. It's also always to do with calls. I'm fine for text and meetups, but calls/video calls. I'm very hesitant.
Absolutely daft, I know. But it's a hangup I have.
This also all being said, I do think the best course forward for me for now, at least vocalising plan wise, is to meet up with some people on some social services online like Discord or etc, maybe completely unrelated to languages, then maybe migrating to Discord Call or VRChat.
I do appreciate the suggestions, I just don't know how well I'd take to it with the fear and all. Also, always a joy to see your messages on here, but my instance keeps blocking your replies on the post so this is about the only time I can properly respond to you too, but just wanted to say that.
Thanks for that, it's nice to hear.
I'd say at the very least make sure you're shadowing with your videos, so you're getting the muscle memory rolling. I actually have the same problem, but in the inverse: I want nitpicky feedback on my speaking, at least for a while at first, but ain't no one gonna do that with social taboos being what they are. A well-prompted AI could do it, but ehhhh. That's a lot of conversation turns, which means it's gonna cost, and at that point I may as well buy italki lessons, lol
I'm officially registered for the JLPT! 🙌🏻
A couple friends seem to think I'm gonna do well, wish I had their confidence. Hopefully I'll feel better about where I am in three months. Back to the grind!
The Kontrollverlust (150 songs) download from their website was a huge boost to my music collection, but most of the songs ended up being English covers. I still got dozens of German songs out of it though.
The Disney songs in German are far more approachable today than before. I know I've improved even if I'm not fully understanding the nuance.
I might be ready to try watching a Disney movie or other kid-friendly simpler German movie. Or maybe not, hard to tell. I probably should focus more on my textbook though ...