Yeah, i just saw your link on the "Chinese resources" thread - thank you so much for that! It looks awesome

i kind of feel the same, but the problem is that I always compare my Japanese with my English, and since I can understand and speak English without any difficulty I always feel my Japanese is so far behind. But it's true what you say about the importance of keeping up my Japanese while doing Chinese from now on.
I might just give it a go...

Btw, have you started Chinese?

I have no idea how you all combine that many languages and are left with any free time. Typically my SrSing takes 1,5-2 hours a day for japanese alone. I try to incorporate japanese in what I do in my free time as much as possible, but I doubt I would be able to do that for 2 or 3 languages at the same time, unless you have no job and are not in some sort of schooling.

@kuma:
lol, i'm not learning all of them!!! i just started a few different ones as a taster before settling on one.

It does depend on your lifestyle, but i really don't review Japanese anymore. The only time i use SRS for Japanese is if i approach a new subject where there's a lot of new vocab, to keep the vocab in my head for a month or so until it "settles".

Reviewing every word of a language forever is neither possible, nor desirable, i think. It's extremely helpful until you have a firm core vocab, but after that you should be able to pick up stuff as you go along, and it'll stick much better because you remember the context.

So when you get to that point, your time'll be freed up to SRS something else...

Last edited by IceCream (2012 February 27, 5:25 pm)

Takes me 30-40 minutes to both decks(sentence+vocabulary deck). Not including adding any new cards into the mix. I leave that for another time.

howtwosavealif3 wrote:

Kuma01 wrote:

I have no idea how you all combine that many languages and are left with any free time. Typically my SrSing takes 1,5-2 hours a day for japanese alone. I try to incorporate japanese in what I do in my free time as much as possible, but I doubt I would be able to do that for 2 or 3 languages at the same time, unless you have no job and are not in some sort of schooling.

what? that's way too long for srs reviews????????
you must have a lot of reviews. Aren't you better off immersing as opposd to srsing that much? well I don't know what decks you have..

Today I spent 36 minutes and that's because I added a korean deck  like a month ago. but even then I feel like I should try to get it down to 20 minutes lol.

I have a hesig deck (it's in kakitori format), and 3 more decks in different formats for japanese and one korean deck. 5 decks total.

Well that's not just reviews but also includes learning new cards. Also I write down new facts and the ones I failed when I review. I reckon that adds the extra time. I guess I could leave out the writing , but for some reason I feel like I am unable to truely internalize a word without writing it every so often.

vileru wrote:

Zorlee, I'm sure everyone will agree with me when I say your Japanese is incredible...

This post grabbed my interest and I did a little of research on "Zorlee's case".

It looks that he started in April 2009 and was mainly following AJATT. I say mainly because although he did start with RtK, and followed with KO, in his studies he didn't disregard grammar (which is against AJATT's recommendations). I've also seen full immersion in native media (manga, subtitled DVDs, etc), as well as significant effort in reviews (initially 1hr, then ~2-4hrs a day). After ~1.5 year, in August 2010, he moved to Tokyo Osaka for about 10 months. Today he can claim proficiency at JLPT1 level.

I want to reflect on two things here.

Firstly, I want to congratulate Zorlee on an unquestionable achievement. Zorlee, your story can and should inspire others.

Secondly, those who would like to follow Zorlee's tracks must be aware of an effort that he put into his language studies and not factor out his extended stay in Japan.

Edit: Changed Tokyo to Osaka, after Zorlee's comment.

Last edited by Inny Jan (2012 June 20, 7:31 am)

Icecream: Hahaha! Three languages in one week!? Sounds like one of those "get fluent in 24 hours" courses!
French? Cool! I love French! I'm going for either French or Italian after I'm done with Japanese and Chinese.
I just want one language where I can sound passionate and sexy while talking! LOL!
I'll definitely check out the Zhongwen deck. There's audio right? Is it sentence based or single vocab? I don't have Anki on the computer I'm using right now, so I can't check it out right myself.

Vileru: Thank you for your kind words. Maybe I am a bit overly anxious about this…

Inny Jan: Haha! Thanks for the FBI-style background check! It's more or less correct, but you got one thing wrong - I lived in Osaka, not Tokyo

Guoguodi: I think you're right regarding personality type. I've never been good at doing two things at the same time. But I'm hoping that I might be able to change this pattern from now on...

Zorlee wrote:

Icecream: Hahaha! Three languages in one week!? Sounds like one of those "get fluent in 24 hours" courses!
French? Cool! I love French! I'm going for either French or Italian after I'm done with Japanese and Chinese.
I just want one language where I can sound passionate and sexy while talking! LOL!
I'll definitely check out the Zhongwen deck. There's audio right? Is it sentence based or single vocab? I don't have Anki on the computer I'm using right now, so I can't check it out right myself.

lololol yeahhh!!! it'd be awesome to sound passionate and sexy, i hope i get there!!! Right now i just sound a bit like a slow text to speech program that was designed to read english words, not french.

I'm sure i'll have collated a bunch of great French resources by the time you're done with J+C, and you'll have done the same for Chinese, so we can swap once we're done!!!

Yeah, there's audio in the Zhongwen deck!!! And yeah, it's sentences. Even though it's more fun to pick your own sentences, that deck is just *so* nice to use, you can literally just open it up and start learning with zero prior knowledge, and still learn a bunch of sentences each day.
It's here, when you're free to download: http://forum.koohii.com/viewtopic.php?p … 63#p167863

If you want vocab to go along with it, the smartfm decks are here:
http://forum.koohii.com/viewtopic.php?p … 90#p167590
(there aren't so many compound words though it's helpful to hear the tones slowly in the single words anyway. it also has sentences of course, but they're less i+1)

Last edited by IceCream (2012 February 28, 9:49 am)

I'd never venture to study a language unless I have a means to actively use it, otherwise the moment I stop studying, my hard-earned proficiency will atrophy. A language is something that requires an immense amount of upkeep over the years (one can forget even a mother tongue, under the right conditions), and thus must be maintained. This is why I picked up English - Internet (ok that was way too early for it to be a conscious decision, but the point stands), German - soon to immigrate, and Japanese - anime.

Thus, pick up a new language if you have something that will force you to use the old ones as often as possible. Even better if you have something similar for the new language too.

Hey Zorlee (and everyone),

Just wanted to mention my experience with Mandarin up till now. I'm a bit similar to you I guess, in that we both studied Japanese pretty hardcore (I got to 10k in my vocab deck in like half a year, passed N2 last winter while I was studying in Japan for a year). But my level is way, way, way below yours, let's make that clear. Also I didn't do much Japanese since I got back half a year ago.
Instead I chose to pick up Mandarin, and I like it a lot. For one there are just a lot more Chinese here (in the Netherlands), some of them even live in the student apartments I live in, so ample opportunity (and usefulness for eavesdropping ) to speak it. But I didn't go hardcore with Chinese like I did with Japanese, took it easy which kept it fun

My experience so far:
- You should really study Chinese pronunciation. With Japanese you can get away pretty much by imitating (whole other world if you want to sound like a native but anyway), but with Mandarin it helped me to know how your mouth needs to be shaped when you make certain sounds, for instance to curl up your tongue with the sh, or to know what aspirated consonants are. In the first phase I definitely needed a native to correct my pronunciation, with the tones obviously but also the pronunciation in general.
- About that native speaker, I could actually find language exchange partners in my own native language Dutch! You're Norwegian right? Perhaps you already found some Japanese wanting to learn Norwegian, but if not I think chances are a lot bigger to find Chinese wanting to learn it.
- The upside is that when you finished RTK and Core 6000/10000, reading Mandarin will be a lot easier since you don't need to do any 'groundwork'. Like Ice-cream mentioned, most of the time Mandarin readings are somewhat similiar, plus there is (mostly) only one reading per character! How nice
- Right now I feel like the grammar is not as complicated as Japanese, but this could be a drawback as well because you don't have any cues when you're listening.
- Mandarin becomes easier when you know Japanese, there is quite a lot of vocabulary overlap. I haven't really thorougly investigated, but learning Mandarin from Japanese seems entirely feasible. I think Mandarin books/manga are actually easier to understand with a Japanese translation than an English translation next to it because of the overlap (had that experience a few times already), so then you do both at the same time. 
- I haven't had any real problems 'mixing' Japanese and Chinese thusfar, but I haven't spoken much Chinese yet (there were a lot of あの's though when I first tried speaking Chinese ). Since I lived in Japan for a year, Japanese feels pretty well ingrained in my system (my poor level anyway), so I expect no real problems there.
- All in all Mandarin has different linguistic challenges from Japanese which I think make it very interesting (and perhaps more fun than a more similar language like Korean).

My study plan:
- Anki Zhongwen Red deck (will finish this in a week)
Like Ice-cream mentioned this is a really good deck with nice audio (although there are some heavy regional accents in there I think ) Helps to ingrain some basic sentence structures

- HSK Basic Vocabulary (availabe in Anki downloads with audio, finished this few weeks ago)
I like to do two decks simultaneously, because there is some overlap both will get easier and easier. Also vocab decks are still faster.

- Chinese listening deck
I created this deck with the amazing Chinese core sentence deck: http://forum.koohii.com/viewtopic.php?p … 77#p161077
Since listening is my weakest skill, but also the one I want to improve the most, I have just sound on the front of the card, and transcription+translation on the back.

Conclusion: You should definitely go for it if you think it's fun.

Last edited by kame3 (2012 March 16, 8:24 am)