Animefangirl's recent posts

That is the point of spaced repetition systems (SRS) in language learning. The assumption is that you WILL forget everything you've learned pretty quickly unless someone or something reminds you of it regularly. There are tons out there, find one that works for you and stick with it. I find they are great for remembering vocabulary and short phrases, not so great for everything else. 

As for how I can tell I'm making progress, it's when I try media/content made for native speakers. I know I'm intermediate when I can follow what they're saying and pick out words and phrases with the help of English subtitles. I consider myself advanced when I can do the same, but with subtitles in the language. And I'd say I'm fluent once I don't need any subtitles to follow native content. I focus more on watching and understanding things rather than speaking, so these are 100% my own personal standards.

Oh awesome, glad to hear it. I'll look closer.

I like listening to songs in languages I'm learning, so I've uploaded a few. I'd like if it there was a "Song" tag that uploaders could apply so I could find songs more easily on this site.

Something like "What Foreigners Think of Japan" or "What Draws Foreigners to Japan" would be more accurate IMO.

Hmm, nothing wrong with this conversation, but I thought from the title that they were going to talk about romantic international relationships.

Reading this in May by pure coincidence.

It was good to see the inside of a very normal-looking apartment, but... maybe because it felt so "lived in," I felt like I was invading their privacy! 😅😅😅

Would be much better to have to song instead of the AI reading of the lyrics, IMO.

I wouldn't have minded hearing 10 more minutes of this stuff 😂

Not me immediately googling how to make millefeuille... 😋

Nice. I don't like birds either, but I learned a lot of bird names (the better to avoid them).

I don't know what I was expecting from the title "visitors," but presents for aliens certainly wasn't it!

First I ever heard of receiving a red envelope for returning to work. Very motivational.

Thanks for the tip. I'm not seriously learning Mandarin but it will come in handy for other languages with the same problem.

And this is what wants to take over our jobs? Ha. Ha. Ha...

Another run-on sentence. Breathe, AI, breathe!

Almost perfect except where it reads the numbers out loud. I think it's good enough now TBH.

It's much better, apart from the constant repetition of "MBST". That's supposed to represent some kind of punctuation, I think?

That would be great, thanks.

What's with this audio, not even a pause for a full stop or a comma?

Audio link leads to a blank site. Might want to remove link entirely for safety.

Nope, it wasn't my imagination. I went back and listened to the Cantonese conversations. Not only do they speak faster but they also pronounce things a lot less clearly than what I'd expect, maybe because of the "lazy sound" phenomenon.

...I still like Cantonese more, though.

The amount of sugar added is the main reason why I avoid buying savory Japanese foods. I usually make it myself if I want to eat anything Japanese and leave out all but a tiny pinch of sugar.

The bigger problem is that the audio is not working, and copying the link leads to http://www.africa.uga.edu/Kiswahili/doe/unit_03/section_C/lesson01.html which is also not loading.

It just feels like they speak more slowly and more clearly so I can pick up individual words and tell them apart very easily. Could be my imagination.

Why is it that I've been learning Cantonese for so much longer and yet find Mandarin so much easier to understand? :-<

I'm a native English speaker, but that was an interesting read.

Hmm, I wonder if that thing about leaving a little food on your plate in China is true. I've never been there but it sounds a bit... sus.

Am I getting better or are they speaking more slowly lately? I had to increase the speed slightly to 1.1x to not get irritated.

Heh, like I'd ever tell anyone if I won the lottery. I haven't though -__-

Interesting conversation. I wish they would sit closer to the mics and not whisper, though.

And it's interesting to compare this conversation about scandals to the one in Japanese conversations where they danced around the topics and didn't name any names. This is much juicier ;-)

For reference, the first scandal they're talking about is Shinsuke Shimada's retirement from entertainment (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinsuke_Shimada). The quiz program was Quiz Hexagon II (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quiz!_Hexagon_II) and the group that formed and released a hit single, eventually appearing on Kohaku Utagassen, was Shuchishin (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shuchishin).

Not sure which actress they are talking about in the suicide section, but depending on when it was recorded, it may have been Sayaka Kanda (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayaka_Kanda).

Lol, they sound like two co-workers forced to make conversation at a company party XD

Mastering Japanese conversation 101: そうですね。そうですか。そうですね。

Lesson 102 and following: Refer to lesson 101 :D

To add to what leosmith said, make sure you learn the script with the correct stroke order. It's very important. I ignored it at first when I started learning Japanese, and eventually I had to relearn how to write everything again from scratch.

Also in practice, unless you're a student you probably won't be writing a lot of kanji by hand these days, but writing things down is an immense help to memorization, so I recommend it. 

Thanks a zillion. I'll give it a try with my Cantonese vocab list tomorrow.

I hadn't thought in detail about how it would behave, just something along the lines of Anki or Memrise that helps you remember words by showing them to you often. The option for exporting vocabulary right now doesn't come with audio, just a text file, which isn't too useful for Cantonese. But if there's a better way to export to Anki, I'd love to know that. I'm not sure what a TTS is or what the TTS addon does, since I usually use Memrise.

Interesting... in every language I find female speakers easier to understand than male except French. And not just for these conversations but all the other videos and audio files I've watched/listened to. I feel like they speak slightly faster and have more of a tendency to drop the 'e'.

Thanks. Then since I'm already asking for a lot, I might as well ask for more: an inbuilt SRS to help with learning vocabulary. Exporting vocabulary is handy, but it doesn't export audio files. Also I'm lazy so it's nice to have everything in one place :p

Text is 99% English. Maybe it should be moved to the "No Knowledge" section.

This text is in English. The wrong captions must have been imported.

The "Studied" tag is helpful, but I was hoping I could sort by that tag somehow. For now I've worked around it by changing the order from Sort by Created Date ↓ to Sort by Created Date ↑. I guess I can play around with other sorting methods to keep getting fresh passages.

It might already exist, but I want a function to either hide passages I've already read or move them to the bottom of the list. As I read more and more, I end up having to scroll past as lot of stuff I'm already done with to find something new. Something like an option to sort by unread would be nice. 

Longest run-on sentence ever 😂

Thanks for the clarification.  

Good advice, nice clear easy-to-understand French.

BTW what's the true function of "Add Comment"? Sometimes I comment because I have a problem, but often I don't have a problem and I just found the text really useful. What kind of comments are okay or not okay?

Terrible luck, especially the bout of ill-health. But it seems the other languages are going well, and there will be other trips to Korea. Hang in there!

Interesting. Good to know, thanks.

It would also be nice to have a way to flag issues with the original creator so they can fix them.

All of the content on the first page (talking about the sponsor) is missing from the video. The video starts from "Mes chers camarades , bien le bonjour ! Ah, les manifestations , on en a tous connu" on the second page.

Uh, is this really an intermediate text? It seems a bit hard to me, or maybe I'm just that rusty.

Audio doesn't work for me, until I copied the Audio link and went to the site. Would be nice if a note/link could be added.

Lol, these YouTube auto-transcripts are atrocious. I was under the impression that their transcription software had improved lately, but I get now. Not sure how helpful this would be for learners, but it was a very interesting video.

This isn't really advanced, though? More like intermediate, or upper-intermediate in a pinch.

Aprender.Espanol wrote:

Regarding this topic - Has anyone heard of Refold and their immersion method?

Hadn't heard of them until you mentioned it, but upon Googling, it doesn't seem like anything special. As soon as I got to the section on "How Do Children Acquire Language?" I tuned out. I'm not a child, I'm not interested in learning how children learn, children aren't particularly efficient learners either. Any method that uses children as a guide for adult learners loses me quickly.

Jade.Xuereb wrote:

I haven't quit but I have been less interested in learning French since I went to stay in France last, without offense I found it to be the only place I have ever been and bothered to try to speak the language where the people were not very encouraging of it.

I've heard that a lot about the French, Parisiens in particular. I'm sorry that happened to you, but don't give up! 

...Or maybe give up and join me in Cantonese hell! 

Join me... in despair!  

Thank you so much! I finally listened to the full thing and like it even more than before. Your "Thank you" is 9 months late, but better late than never!

I was bad at Mandarin Chinese back in college and gave it up, but retrying it after learning Cantonese... Mandarin is soooo easy. You can actually hear what they're saying in distinct words! And they actually say what the text says they say. And there's a ton of learning material to work with.

...I still love Canto more, though. It sounds so good in my ears.

I'm sort-of dropping Cantonese to focus on Korean. My progress in the latter is just so much better, so I'd rather strike while the iron is hot. But just for 2021, then I'll go back to Cantonese and maybe add something else.

Sorry, I meant something like "Ultra Advanced." Like beyond the learner level and into "How people actually speak in Hong Kong" level. The male x male dialogues are great for that reason, but they are definitely harder than the female x male ones.

Also this wasn't a 100% serious suggestion.

Sorry for the late reply. I checked again just now and I still can't watch it, either on Youtube or in the Reading Tool (please see attached screenshots). It may be a regional thing.

The conversations with Xon should be labeled "Advanced" or "Native Level" because he speaks so quickly with a ton of lazy sounds.  

leosmith wrote:

Animefangirl wrote:

I've made more progress in 3.5 years of Korean than in 10 years of Korean.

Did you mean 10 years of Cantonese? Incidentally, we have Cantonese Conversations here, claimed by some to be the best listening/reading course for Cantonese.

Yes, Cantonese. I can't edit my message any more. The Cantonese Conversations are FANTASTIC. A huge help to my progress.

Korean! Your Korean resources are very helpful, so I hope you will keep posting them.

I'm learning Cantonese as well, but I've made more progress in 3.5 years of Korean than in 10 years of Korean. It may be because there are so many more resources in Korean than in Cantonese. Or more likely because I already speak Japanese, so the similarities between Korean and Japanese make the former easy to learn.

The video has been marked as "Private" so I can't watch it.

It's an interesting read all right, but it's just one guy's experience. I'd like to see some studies and some actual empirical data before I take that 6-month break from Korean.

China has already banned dialects in a number of areas. Inner Mongolia is simply the latest. Their protests won't have much effect, I'm afraid. 

This was a helpful lesson, because I learned a lot of traditional Chinese dim sum names. I was watching another Youtube video about a dim sum restaurant and a lot of the terms flew over my head, but now I can tackle it with a little more confidence.

Yeah, that's me. Thank you for reading and for all the kind words!

I'm a little bit embarrassed because I started blogging about Cantonese almost 10 years ago and I'm STILL not fluent. But the Languagetools lessons look like just the thing to get me over the Intermediate bump.

Spoonfed is really great, and actually just the ticket for someone who isn't SUPER into Mandarin and doesn't want to invest too much time in it. I'll check out ZhongWen Red Green Blue so thanks for the suggestion!

Oh well, that's okay. I'm sure once my Cantonese is better I'll be able to look up the words myself. 👍

That was a good talking speed. Not too fast, not too slow, so I could follow the transcript along with the speech. Could you tell me what song plays at the beginning and the end? I like it a lot!