Update 1: I tried LingQing and found the grammar so confusing that I decided to take on that first. I now am quite familiar with “desu, ka, ga, wa” and (I think) i understand the most basic sentence structures.
I don’t have a real focus for the next hour, but after that I will probably go for a 2 hour LingQ session of looping the audios and staring at these tiny drawings that still look like some snails sprawling over my screen that is called Hiragana. I call it “snailscript”
"Cossie, Cossie, Cossie! Oi! Oi! Oi! Tommy Tommy Tommy! Oi! Oi! Oi!
You bewwwdy, mate! GO for it! Whoohoo! Bonza mate! You can do it! You rippa! GO THE COSSIE!! GO THE TOMMY! Yayyyy!" Just cheering (barracking) you guys on! ^^ Hehe.
I still can’t read a lot. Just made the switch to Japanesepod, because the transcripts work way better than here. This is a big bummer, because I really hoped to be able to make most of the progress here on LingQ. I will be switching a bit back and forth so that I can keep track of myself here on LingQ, but first I will play around with Japanesepod101.
I guess it doesnt make sense to update too often, so I will post something again in probably 4 hours
I had a powernap, because I fell asleep memorizing Hiragana on the couch. The powernap helped me process what I learned, because I can now finally read Hiragana (very slow).
This is helping a lot in my progress, but I have lost a lot of time on the stupid auto sentencing within LingQ (MODERATORS PLEASE IMPROVE THIS!!) and I didn’t know I could use the “Romanji” to combine the correct words.
Edit: Chrome plugin Rikaikun + hide-spacing option in LingQ made this a lot easier. Unfortunately I am not that familiar with the LingQ system. Wasted a lot of time on nothing
I just listened to Steve’s easy introduction to Japanese verbs, which I think was a really nice summary of some of the basics. I said that I thought I understood quite some of that a few hours ago, but that was not neccesarily true. It just makes me feel better thinking I do know everything. Here it is in case people want to check it: Login - LingQ
I am not even halfway. I only spend 8-9 hours on Japanese today, so there is still a long road to go. Words known stands at 29, but from now it will start going up fast. There are also quite some words I know already, but I wanted to let them sink in and then check again if I really remember them. I will have forgotten them next week, but thats ok.
Boom! 100 known words on here. (Sounds better than: 100 words I can passively recognize in the specific context I saw them and have a superficial translation based clue about their meaning.) I’m out of here for today and will end the day watching japanesepod101 in my bed until I pass out, which will be soon enough. NOTE TO ADMINISTRATORS: Awkward word spacing, lack of good default dictionaries, lack of consistent romanization and lack of whole lesson translations for beginner level content make LingQ much less usefull for beginning Asian languages than it could be. Without the parallel support from japanesepod101 and knowing the beginner stories so well I would have had a hard time figuring out the beginner stuff. And in Chinese it would be a pain in the glutes, if I didn’t have the Zhongwen extension that LFJ recommended. Functionality for Asian Ls should still be optimized.
Lets make a seperate post to point this out later. It really is terrible. I can understand in case of the user generated lessons, but these are the ones LingQ uploaded. 100 words and you can read Hiragana now. The goal was to get familiair with the language, have some fun while doing it and talk about it.
For the other people that are reading. I will create a new post tomorrow or the day after for next months language (which will be decided by vote)
I already quitted LingQing, because it didnt feel too well. I will be listening to some Japanese for another hour in bed and then I will do max 1 hour of LingQ in the morning.
For me it was fun to try. I had planned to learn Hiragana beforehand and spend some more hours,but I have been lazy and monday was a bad choice.
I didn’t know anything about Japanese and now I understand some basic grammar, I will probably end with 100-150 known words and last but definitely not least; I can effectively read and even write Hiragana! I was totally lost this afternoon, but now I nailed this and I’m so happy for that!
The goal was to have fun and play around with a new language and I can say that for me personally it has been quite a succes.
From now on I will do this every last sunday of the month. I will create a thread one of these days and we will vote on next months language.
Tommy’s report:
To be honest I didn’t even get close to spending 18 wake hours on Japanese. But even with my 8-10 half assed hours I feel I’ve gotten my moneys worth for this little ‘experiment’. I can poorly read hiragana. I’ve nailed down a few phrases to spout at Japanese people when I see them. I’ve gotten a shallow but fair beginner’s impression of what the thing looks and sounds like. And should I go back to it some distant day, I’ll have half a little toe in the door already. TO BE CONTINUED IN 24 hour language session part 2… Next one will be on a Sunday and we’ll make it more intense.
I’m out of here for today and will end the day watching japanesepod101 in my bed until I pass out, which will be soon enough. NOTE TO ADMINISTRATORS: Awkward word spacing, lack of good default dictionaries, lack of consistent romanization and lack of whole lesson translations for beginner level content make LingQ much less usefull for beginning Asian languages than it could be. Without the parallel support from japanesepod101 and knowing the beginner stories so well I would have had a hard time figuring out the beginner stuff. And in Chinese it would be a pain in the glutes, if I didn’t have the Zhongwen extension that LFJ recommended. Functionality for Asian Ls should still be optimized.
…back to Chinese!