(no subject)

[ysobel]

...there is a part of me that thinks I'm crazy -- and asking for disappointment -- in trying to learn Japanese. Because three writing systems, because very different language, because I have no real use for it and I could be spending my energy on languages that are useful (Spanish, Russian to a lesser extent) or languages that I'm more likely to succeed with (Spanish, German). That I came across a DW entry from a few years back where I was stopping doing German duolingo because the words weren't sticking, and *i used to be pretty close to fluent*. I don't have the same background with Japanese, and aside from the basics (konnichiwa, sayonara, arigato, hai, iie, 1-10) and English-adopted loanwords (sushi, samurai, haiku, etc) I have no prior knowledge, and the few words I've gotten so far aren't sticking. (I'm sort of remembering the alternate 4 and 7. Duo has also given me a few colors -- red white blue (aka shiro ao?) -- and the learn Japanese app has given me "half, half past" and "o'clock" both of which I'm blanking on -- but I just. I'm not really retaining, and I'm kind of worried about trying to get katakana as well as hiragana, and the voice in my head is going on about how stupid this all is and how I should just give up and stick with something easy or useful or sensible or whatever.

I know that some of this is brainweasels. The "you are going to mess up so why bother trying" non-logic is pretty signature. But I can't tell if it's also telling the truth...

Comments

[ysobel]

I haven't gotten super far in duo's Japanese -- mostly it's been hiragana (which I deliberately learned before trying duo) -- but it tends not to explain things. But I'm also doing memrise, which is much better -- it doed break things down into components. (I dabbled in the Spanish lesson, and it has literal translation (e.g. "tu" is "you (singular, informal)" as well as regular translation ("you"). Or with Japanese, distinguishing "ni (hiragana)" from "two". Again I still haven't gotten far, but I suspect it will continue to be good.)

[mathemagicalschema]

Yeah, Duo Chinese has some shortcomings that sound similar - certain aspects of the grammar are really difficult to pick up on properly without being specifically instructed. And grammar instruction gets you a bit farther with Chinese than some languages (like our bastard native tongue), because for the most part it's pretty logical and consistent.

Good luck :D