i hear the voices when I'm dreaming

Part ichi is here

So, okay. Where was i?

Ah right:

I have a new not-a-job (!!!!]

( teal deer: online cat herder )

My mom thinks I'm crazy for doing this -- she worries that it's Too Much -- and I can't explain to her either why it isn't (and she has no idea how vicious my brainweasels can get or how deep my self-loathing can go) or why it matters to me that I'm doing something. Luckily, she's not the boss of me, so I don't have to.

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Language updates:

Tomorrow's Duolingo will make a 750-day streak.

I don't know how. O.o

I'm mostly doing low key Spanish stuff, figuring that a little each day will keep that part of my brain happy even though I'm not devoting Lots Of Learning to it.

I'm also still doing WaniKani for learning Japanese kanji (though since the characters are borrowed from Chinese, there's some overlap, and I was very amused to recognize 牛肉 as "cow meat" on a beef menu item at a Chinese restaurant). The kanji are getting tricksier and more complicated looking, though I do have to say that WK's method is pretty effective.

The only down side is it doesn't teach grammar, and I haven't found a really good thing for grammar. Duo sucks (it's better with languages that are similarer to English, really). Memrise is awesome but horrible at accessibility (I think I did a rant on this but teal deer; on iOS the kanji are tiny and there's no way to zoom; on the computer, all reviews are timed, in that you have 15 seconds to think of the answer and type it out; and they don't have a "kana but no kanji" course, just an everything version where I can't read the kanji, or a "no Japanese characters" version that hurts my brain, partly because I have to transliterate it into hiragana in my head anyway to match up with the rest of my knowledge, partly because they do things like "arigatō" where I'm used to "arigatou"; it's pronounced as a long closed o vowel, but written as ありがとう and とう is (to)(u).) There are textbooks, but I can't use physical textbooks.

I do have one app that does give basic grammar, so I'm doing that in parallel with learning the kanji. And hopefully some of it will stick, lol.

Meanwhile, my roommate is taking beginning Japanese this quarter and so we're doing super bad Japanese at each other. Like, she's started saying tadaimas' when she comes home, and I say okaeri back at her. Today she learned about telling time, which I can sort of do, in the sense of "..........uhhh, roku ji, uh, san... jyuu... go... fun. Uh, desu," (六時三十五分です = it's 6:35) Basically long pauses between each syllable, and I am of course better with translating written Japanese into English than trying to get English into Japanese.

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Part three of updateyness will come ... sometime not right now.

Current status of learning Japanese: progress is being made! I have hiragana down pretty well; I have katakana somewhat down, but it's a lot slower ("this letter is ... re. This letter is ... ma? No, su" levels of slow) and more error-prone. But I do have a few sentences, and I can recognize a handful of kanji -- 私 and 名前 and 何 and 元気, though with the last I can never remember which order the two go in.

I'm using two main apps (not counting the ones for kana and for kanji), and they've both been cracking me up.

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Duolingo is mostly in "hiragana with occasional individual words" rather than sentences. Some words are sticking, mostly ones I was already familiar with (watashi, arigatō, sayōnara, and 1-10) or have something to hang them on (neko already had cat associations, inu has dog associations because shiba inu), but the rest just aren't sticking at all.

But, uh.

Occasionally it gives me super hard stuff, like manga, which translates to ... manga. And emoji translates as emoji. Who knew?!? ^_^

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Memrise seems to be sticking better, and also has sentences and stuff. (私の名前は……です! Watashi no namae wa ... desu. "My name is..." Except I don't know how I'd transcribe isabeau. イザボ maybe?) And it's mostly sticking, except for some of the kanji. I'm totally hopeless at, uhhh, *looks it up* 調子 "condition", which I can recognize but not generate, and can not remember the pronunciation, chōshi, to save my life; 乾杯 "cheers" I can reliably remember the second bit with the up arrows, but the first I just randomly flail at the available kanji options until it says I'm right. And for the kanji, they don't give the option of using hiragana instead -- 私 (watashi, I/me) is always 私 and never わたし, just like marina is always winter and never Christmas.

But I digress.

So, okay: with languages like Japanese that have different lettering systems, they have "translation" of letters, e.g. "き" to "ki (hiragana)". (And I am very glad for the (hiragana) even though sometimes I do things like stare at "me (hiragana)" and wonder why "私" isn't one of the options...)

Now, each item has three (sometimes four) associated objects: English written version, Japanese written version, and Japanese audio (sometimes also video). And there are lots of options for how they drill you: a) translate from English to Japanese; b) translate from Japanese to English; c) given Japanese audio/video, select or transcribe the correct Japanese text; d) given Japanese audio/video, select the correct English translation; e) given Japanese text, select the correct Japanese audio; f) given English text, select the correct Japanese audio. Basically, all permutations of English/Japanese/audio.

In the context of actual words, like いいえ "no", this is all very useful. Ditto sentences.

In the context of the letters, option f is *really fucking hilarious* to me.

I mean. Drilling that や is "yo" is useful. Drilling that "yo" is よ, also useful. Drilling that "yo" sounds like "yo" ... um ... not so much.