I was wondering why I started hating some of my reps, it was because of that production deck. So I deleted some vocab(category) that I was actively writing (my reviews went down to 24 and it was 106 before). So this tells me that for this, I'm going to go really slow and aim for the next 3 years to get over 3000 kanji (in terms of writing). So I'll start by adding 20 new cards for vocabulary with easy kanji I know already and build up.

This is probably not exactly a "milestone achievement", but here it goes:

Today I was at an amusement park, and a couple needed to know how to buy tickets. I tried to explain them about the tickets, but couldn't because I would automatically switch back to Japanese. I wouldn't even realize for some seconds that I was speaking Japanese, and when I realized I would apologize with a "すみません". It was a communication fail, but on the other hand it was a success: I'm so used to Japanese that even when trying to speak in English I switch back automatically. As they say: 失敗は成功の元.

Disclaimer: English is my L2, and Japanese my L3. When speaking in my L1 the same thing doesn't happen. But I almost don't use my L1 now anyway so that's not a problem.

6000 vocab cards, hell yes(getting back to where I was before). I originally thought of having high deck numbers but I know now it's not important. Realistic, 20,000 cards is probably enough for me in the long-term. 30,000 for vocab possibly but other decks, I don't think so (unless my goal is beyond native-level, which it isn't).

Yay finished Core 2000

Tomorrow reviews will be terrible as I kinda forced it today so that I would "finish it"

Moving on to core 6000 and KO2001 soonish. When I finish these 2 I will finally hopefully be able to read without needing a dictionary for every sentence I see.

About 2 years into my (heavily diluted by full-time university, moving cross-country, repeated illnesses, and career) Japanese by immersion and flashcards effort, I enrolled in 5th semester/Advanced Spoken Japanese last month. No prior speaking experience since a high school class 10 years ago. Doing completely fine at speaking compared to the rest of the class, and I own reading/writing. Not an amazing milestone, but I'm pretty proud.

Finished 日本語総まとめN1文法＾＾

Zorlee Wrote:Finished 日本語総まとめN1文法＾＾

すごいじゃん！私はというと、その教科書を勉強しはめたばかりです。頑張ります！

Wrote an essay (in English) for Geography about the Touhoku Earthquake... researched it entirely in Japanese though and wound up with 15 cites from sources like newspapers and government websites, aid organisations and stuff like that. Made me feel like I deserved passing N1 after all. Awesome fun researching stuff in Japanese.

This deck contains 2016 unique Hanzi.
Yay and stuff! As far as the communist party of China is concerned, I'm literate now! (not really, since about 100 or so of these characters are only used for onomatopeia)
I did slow down after reaching my first milestone (1000 characters) as I didn't have as much spare time as I used to have when I was starting out, however I can also read a lot faster now (duh), so it's basically business as usual.
Turns out Chinese does use a lot more characters (duh²).. I still encounter new ones fairly often when reading comics and playing games. For the most part, there's at least one or two on every page.
As for newspapers,.. yeah, maybe in a few months or so. Although I read quite a few times how mainland newspapers are easier than their Taiwanese counterparts, it still takes a heck of a long time to decipher a single article. Learning Chinese is lots of fun and very rewarding though. It's just like Japanese.. with even more characters that all look the same!!

My new goal: Know how to read at least 3000 characters by the end of the year

I made some goals for October:
Make Left Right Texts and Interleaved Texts for Harry Potter chapters 4 and 5 (and read them).
Make a subs2srs deck of the first episode of Clannad and pick out useful cards.
Add two more grammar points from A Dictionary Of Basic Japanese Grammar.
Add 150 kanji cards to my Anki deck (I did Heisig with physical cards and stopped reviewing a while back)
Break up two songs into sound clips and sentences and add them to Anki.


And I've achieved them all I think I'm going to continue to set modest goals!



My next set of goals is to continue the Harry Potter stuff for chapter 6 and 7
Read the first volume of Bleach, picked at random, there's a surprising amount of vocab I don't know.
Add three more grammar points from Dictionary Of Basic Japanese Grammar / Dictionary of Intermediate Grammar (if I've finished the first)

Reached 8000 vocabulary words today(seen cards). It feels good to be close to 10,000. My sentence deck isn't as much+production deck(merged) but that's a different story and I'm experimenting with those decks(with MCD＋monlingual look ups+two type monolingual cards and heavy context for the production deck)

Seems so simple and contrite, but I am super proud of myself for reaching 250+ RTK Kanji today. Here's to the next 250! And the next, and the next...

miki76 Wrote:Seems so simple and contrite, but I am super proud of myself for reaching 250+ RTK Kanji today. Here's to the next 250! And the next, and the next...

Keep it up and you will reach 2000+. The feeling is great and full of accomplishment.

I reached Kanji number 910 in Kanji Odyssey yesterday! Only 190 more to go, and I am done with Level 2. Quite an accomplishment, but the real accomplishment will be, to finish it! And, who knows? Maybe I will go the extra mile and also work through level 3, for which I will have to manually create the audio files, but only little by little?

Finshed Core 2000 a few days ago and re read Yotsuba vol 1 and only 2 or 3 words were unknown.

Still unemployed though after 200 apps even internac/shane won't give me an interview More interest from China though, overall renumeration package for teachers seems miles better as well, just a shame my current prospective employer want to do the age old come on tourist visa then get proper one at hong kong afterwards route . Beginning to wish I had of followed through with Heart all those months ago, at least would have been a foot in the door and I have already worked for sketchy employers in the uk ( think tearing doctors notes in front of you, unions that cancel appeal hearings, interferance in person life, etc).

I now have 600 kanji in my kanji koohii deck^_^ only 3/4th left!

hopefully this time I can complete rtk1 without RSI getting in the way
I cant believe I got to 1700...and then had to stop lol.
But this time I'll make it, even if it means going at a snail's pace.

Hit the 7.4k mark with my anki decks, but despite of that my listening skills have not increased even a little, although I constantly listen (passively) while reviewing in anki the same podcasts (HOTCAST). Somehow reaching more and more words does not give me any feeling of accomplishment～

I made it to the 1700 mark today. From now one I am going to try and do 8 new kanji a day for until a finish

tori, try this... people will say it's nonsense but it got me over the listening slump when I was in your exact place...

Load a bunch of nhk newscasts into an ipod and using in-ear headphones, go to sleep listening to the news. it will be uncomfortable to sleep on top of the headphone, so only use one bud at a time, for the top ear as you sleep on your side.

At first you probably won't be able to get to sleep... so bear with me. But after a few weeks you'll get used to it and you'll feel the sounds congealing into words during the day.

I've had several dreams in japanese... and once I remember being asleep and thinking about a word I kept hearing, and wondering what it meant and what kanji it would use... ;D

Tori-kun Wrote:Hit the 7.4k mark with my anki decks, but despite of that my listening skills have not increased even a little, although I constantly listen (passively) while reviewing in anki the same podcasts (HOTCAST). Somehow reaching more and more words does not give me any feeling of accomplishment～

What I recommend is, get transcripts. SRS them and keep listening to those+new things as well. I guarantee in a few weeks you should notice some sort of improvement. I do remember it took me like 6 months to get my listening going but it probably took 1 full year+ before I started understanding the majority of what comes my way. Now at the 2 year mark, it's just little vocabulary words here and there that are specialized, that get me. It's all about filling in the little holes for listening.

This may seem like bad advice but keep at it, even if it hurts(not literally). I just mean, keep at it, even when it's not working. There is no quick-fix here but it will improve. I think for most people, seeing some sort of improvement daily is key to success. Even if it's nothing special(like recognizing 1 kanji, or vocab or even understanding a small section of audio).

dtcamero Wrote:tori, try this... people will say it's nonsense but it got me over the listening slump when I was in your exact place...

Load a bunch of nhk newscasts into an ipod and using in-ear headphones, go to sleep listening to the news. it will be uncomfortable to sleep on top of the headphone, so only use one bud at a time, for the top ear as you sleep on your side.

At first you probably won't be able to get to sleep... so bear with me. But after a few weeks you'll get used to it and you'll feel the sounds congealing into words during the day.

I've had several dreams in japanese... and once I remember being asleep and thinking about a word I kept hearing, and wondering what it meant and what kanji it would use... ;D

they say dreaming in Japanese means your close to fluency or at least heading into that direction. I think once you have a complete dream in Japanese, you know your fluent for sure(well most of the time)

ta12121 Wrote:

dtcamero Wrote:tori, try this... people will say it's nonsense but it got me over the listening slump when I was in your exact place...

Load a bunch of nhk newscasts into an ipod and using in-ear headphones, go to sleep listening to the news. it will be uncomfortable to sleep on top of the headphone, so only use one bud at a time, for the top ear as you sleep on your side.

At first you probably won't be able to get to sleep... so bear with me. But after a few weeks you'll get used to it and you'll feel the sounds congealing into words during the day.

I've had several dreams in japanese... and once I remember being asleep and thinking about a word I kept hearing, and wondering what it meant and what kanji it would use... ;D

they say dreaming in Japanese means your close to fluency or at least heading into that direction. I think once you have a complete dream in Japanese, you know your fluent for sure(well most of the time)

I think I had a wonderful dream about me talking in Japanese to a cute Japanese woman in a very magical place at night when I sucked very very much

Tori-kun Wrote:Hit the 7.4k mark with my anki decks, but despite of that my listening skills have not increased even a little, although I constantly listen (passively) while reviewing in anki the same podcasts (HOTCAST). Somehow reaching more and more words does not give me any feeling of accomplishment～

I haven't been listening to any Podcasts before. Those are interesting! This is why I've been listening to two full casts while doing my reps. I didn't expect it before starting to listen, but I was surprised how much I was able to understand. The one was about 弁当, and in the other they were talking about the new Iphone. I was able to understand them easily. I couldn't understand everything, but it was more than enough to understand most of their conversation, and what it is all about. Later on, I was re-listening to the two casts, kept a file open and typed the words and some sentences in, to look them up. Again no problem. This very positive experience made me all the more curious what your problems with listening really are.

What is it that you can't understand? Don't you understand them in general when they are talking? Or is it the occasional word or sentence that you don't get? Do you listen to anything else besides the above mentioned Podcasts on HOTCAST? I mean things you are listening to, without reading transcripts, and without subtitles in Japanese.

Can you link to a resource that you are able to understand? It mustn't be something that you understand in full. There must be at least something, right?

ta12121 Wrote:they say dreaming in Japanese means your close to fluency or at least heading into that direction. I think once you have a complete dream in Japanese, you know your fluent for sure(well most of the time)

Yeah, this is kind of a myth. I've had dreams in Japanese in various stages of my learning. See, if you have situations in real life involving the language you're learning, if you have a dream about that situation it will be in that language. This is true regardless of how good you are.

I knew a science teacher at one of my old schools, who didn't speak English. But we tried to talk as best we could in Japanese from time to time. I had a dream where I was talking to her back when my Japanese was a lot farther from fluent, and of course it was in Japanese because the dream was a reflection on our actual relationship.

Another thing is that your brain also just makes up shit, especially when you're not so good. Like you'll be having a conversation with someone in Japanese, and your brain will just make up fake Japanese and you'll understand it since you're ultimately the person who made it up. So you can have fairly complicated conversations in Japanese in dreams, because your brain will fill in the parts that are too complicated for you with fake Japanese.

Ah yes, dreams in fake Japanese. Maybe we should call that interlingual Japanese. That used to happen when I went to sleep watching anime. And then I would wake up to the sound of a local radio, and for a minute or so, my brain would only parse the Japanese-like aspects of the speech (syllable stress, "ki" and "fu"...) so I would think I was still listenning to Japanese. Pretty weird.