日本語は話せます 🇯🇵

So I have all five fonts installed in Tsurukame. Knew that if I long pressed it would show the standard font but just realized I can swipe left and right to iterate through others.

When I went through (most of) the reverse Duolingo tree I actually came across many Japanese terms for English grammar. Of course in the lessons there were multiple ways in Japanese to convey various things that were represented in the English tenses.

Did the bare minimum on Wanikani yesterday and today started with a stack of close to three hundred reviews. Dang!

Almost dug myself out. Also just realized that 例えば is tatoeba!

こんにちは！ every year or so i decide that i'm going to learn japanese and then get burnt out after a few months. each time i learn a little bit more and i think i'm on track to reaching my goal in about 20 years.

i'm feeling good about the strategy this time which is to focus on reading. my ultimate goal is to be able to play japanese video games (lol) so i'm thinking that i don't need to get too hung up on memorizing the various kanji readings. some various thoughts:

* the kanji learner's dictionary is a fucking game changer. what used to take 20 minutes to find an unfamiliar kanji now can take as little as 5 seconds with the SKIP indexing.
* the dictionary of basic japanese grammar is a good reference for the most part, but i can't for the life of my find super basic shit like what exactly the ます form is despite it being used in all the entries. i'm thinking i'm going to need to supplement it with a more general textbook... probably genki?
* this time i'm getting as much japanese in front of my eyes as i can and let the pattern recognition neural pathways form. so far this involves playing japanese games and just reading the text to myself whether or not i understand what it's saying. i'm starting to notice patterns and phrases already so i think it's working pretty well!
* it was a real eye opener for me when i realized that text with kanji is easier to read. i was trying to play dragon quest v but it's text is mostly hiragana. really frustrating to not know what something says, only to look it up and realize that it's one of the 5 kanji you actually CAN recognize but just written in hiragana.

I have and like the first edition of the Kanji Learner’s Dictionary but I have to say I hardly ever use the SKIP method, although I see that it could be useful.

そうですか。

Almost had a wanikani breakdown but managed to right the ship, pull back from the brink.

had a 200+ review session earlier to get it under control, afterwards felt like I used up all my brain power for the day
some things I just keep fucking up again and again, like when to use getsu or gatsu or tsuki for month in vocab
or kanji for pause vs suspension

Yes, exactly!

Once I have too many to review I kind of nibble at it: ascending or descending SRS stage or lowest level first, and then when I finally have a chance I just plow through but can’t give it nearly the attention I would for a smaller review

So I just found out the reason most dictionary apps have the same definitions and examples is that they are all based on the same thing, the Tanaka Corpus.

http://www.edrdg.org/wiki/index.php/Tanaka_Corpus

Which is now apparently embedded in Tatoeba.

勝敗は問題ではない。

Easily confused:
願-がん
源-げん

Forgot to mention
原-げん

地図
地区

ah the map made out of cheesu
I've been messing around on Duolingo just for passively learning sentence structure but damn everyone seems to be so competitive in these dumb league tables they have

Renshu grammar is really good for sentence structure once you get past the baffling setup.

The gamification is in the form of a virtual gatchapon.

Sorry, I hated that interface so much I just gave up on that thing.

Forgot to mention
原-げん

Think I have a further elaboration of common transitive/intransitive pair patterns.

If the pairs end in す／る, the first tends to be transitive, the second intransitive.

If the pairs end in える／ある, the first is usually transitive, the second intransitive.

DO U SEE?

Then there is
苦しむ
苦しめる

But
伝える
伝わる
which fit the pattern

流す
流れる

海外旅行なんて無理よ。

コロナなんかですか？

Tsurukame audio feature now broken due to Wanikani file format change :(

No Covid news is good news, thanks. Actually some relatives just got it, but some others tested negative.

Further discussion on the Wanikani community board. Hoping a fix will come soon.

Developer taking a look as of half an hour ago.

…and it is already fixed on TestFlight

会社 and 社会 is driving me nuts, I can never remember which one is which

So many like that, including that pair.

The good thing about WaniKani is that it allows you to test that stuff over and over until you finally get it. The bad thing is that often it feels like I will never get it.

the one that has been really tripping me up tho is 八つ being ya and 八日 is yo, while both 四つ and 四日 are both also yo

so confusing I'm not even sure I got it right this time lol

Same.

Also sometimes not careful about which counter it even is and mix them together.

会社 and 社会 is driving me nuts, I can never remember which one is which

i just learned these words today! time will tell if i'm able to retain the difference between the two as the flashcard intervals get larger.

i'm starting to think my "don't worry about pronunciation" approach might be a bad idea. on the one hand, i can read and understand the kanji but on the other hand, i can't really look them up because i don't know how to type them

Yes. Feel like the whole point of the thing is to learn the most important readings/pronunciations.

Recently signed up for emails from the wanikani guys which led me to this interesting and relevant discussion: https://www.tofugu.com/japanese/kanji-radicals-mnemonic-method/

These two always get me:
相手
助手

会社 and 社会 is driving me nuts, I can never remember which one is which

This one is an easy one for me as I’m often looking for the name and address of a sale brewery in the side of the bottle and anchoring to 株式会社 is the easiest way. 社会　is just the other one.

On the other hand, 相手　and 助手　are infuriatingly close. Inevitably I always do better if I can anchor to something outside of the flash cards.

Recently I have been struggling with

仲良し
仲が良い

which are infuriatingly close in meaning but definitely not the same.

This related word gets mixed in too:
仲良く

Just mixed up these two
専
寺

Sound is back on Tsurukame.

Thing that I am starting to get straight:
The short and long pronunciation of the first kanji here:
世界
世紀
世辞

Thing that still gives me grief:
All the different nuances of meaning as well as whether to rendaku or not for words that start with
大