My Language Learning Goals in 2020

As the new year has started I'd like to give input on my thoughts about my personal goals and feelings regarding language learning in 2020.

Much like in recent years, I keep on improving my Japanese. As I just passed N3, I already started studying for the N2 exam. It's a huge amount of more vocabulary, kanji and grammar I have to remember and understand.

I continue studying with the Anki app having a personalized deck, but I also downloaded a separate deck with N2 words. I study grammar with YouTube channels, and it's best to use some channels where the explanation is all in Japanese (like Nihongo No Mori, 日本語の森). 

Also, I can keep reading a lot of manga, but I feel that I should try reading an unknown story from a novel at some point this year. And manga with no furigana on the kanji would also be important. But for now I'm busy reading through all 42 volumes of Dragon Ball as well as catching up One Piece and Detective Conan with their recent volumes.

Also, as much as I'm able to read manga quite well, I still have lots of trouble understanding keigo in restaurants or combinis. Also it's spoken quite fast making me often unable to follow. Yeah, that's something I need to get better in.

Therefore, Japanese is keeping me busy on daily basis, but I also have some thoughts and plans regarding other languages:

As I grew up near Luxembourg, I speak a German dialect very close to the Luxembourgish language, and can also read news articles in that language. However, interestingly: I cannot really write it, I don't know the exact spelling of words. So I set myself also the goal to use the language more in written form, like texting.

And what about improving other languages? I know basic French and Spanish, but I've currently no ambition or even focus to pursue that. Could it be a something to focus on in the future? Maybe, but for now it's ok to just use it in a basic way, wherever needed. 

About learning any languages from zero? There are surely languages I have an interest to learn, but not this year. Another Germanic language would be interesting. I already understand and can read a bit of Dutch as it's quite close to my native German. 
Swedish or Norwegian would also be interesting. Or even Finnish, which is completely different language, but special in many ways. Also Italian could be interesting as I like the sound of it.

Other Asian languages? I studied a bit of Korean characters on my trip to Seoul by the end of last year and figured that it's actually quite simple. Still, when I sometimes see a name somewhere on social media I try to figure out the reading. Apart from that, I don't really have a connection to the language to further pursue it. And that's something which I feel is quite important. But I wouldn't exclude that there could be something which motivates me on that in the future...

Currently I have no deeper interest in learning other Asian languages. Learning Kanji can keep understanding a bit of Chinese. But I'm pretty sure I would struggle with the correct pronunciation. 

Anyway, I have enough goals right now anyway to keep myself busy. Let's see where this year will bring me.

「Ｎ３へ」ついに合格した! 次は...「一月の考え」

ついにN3を合格した！やっとやったぜ！でもN3への道は簡単のじゃなかった。実はまだ沢山勉強しなきゃ。

面白いことは今回は初めて日本語能力試験を合格した。自分のJLPTの歴史はこのようにだった:

2016年07月　N5　不合格
2018年07月　N4　不合格
2018年12月　N3　不合格
2019年07月　N3　不合格
2019年12月　N3　　合格

N3の三回目に合格した。この時に自分の問題のせいであまり勉強しなかった。試験日に日本にいるかどうかしらかなかった。とにかく、たくさんドラゴンボール漫画読んだし、もちろん毎日奥さんと話した。あと、アンキのアプリに新単語を勉強した。

もっと文法や、長いテクスト読みたかった。だからリーディングには24点だけだった。聴解(リスニング)の点はちょっとびっくりした。ときどき会話は早すぎだった、半分しか分からなかった。とにかく、上達した。

夏にＮ２を試してみると思う。今もう、新しい感じやＮ２の文法を勉強しています。特にユーチューブの「日本語の森」のチャンネルは本当にいいですね。たぶん本も買います。

あと、今はドラゴンボールを最初から読んでいる中、今は第17巻を読んで終えた。本当に簡単です。でも逆にワンピースに使った単語はほうが難しい。今の「ワノ国編」は沢山Ｎ１日本語がある。多分このことについて他の記事書きます。

じゃあ、これからもっと上達したい。頑張ります！N3は大切な目標だったんだけど、本当の挑戦は今のだ！

7 years with Anki

Over the years Anki has become an important and useful tool for myself to collect, repeat and learn vocabulary. 

More than seven years ago I was determined to improve my English and learn as much vocabulary as possible. When I read articles online I found new words, I added them into a deck, same as from TV shows like How I Met Your Mother, Lost and many more.

I was going to a school class in the evening after work which included two hours of English study - although it was probably too easy, but at least it helped me getting more personal confidence. Plus, I also added words from the classes to my deck.

Around that time I started creating a new English Anki deck every year to collect vocabulary. It got more and more and it helped me a lot. The repetition pattern was truly helpful.

Therefore it did the same with other languages like for the time I lived in Spain I collected lots of words with Anki.

But especially recently I got really efficient using it with Japanese. I downloaded decks to learn hiragana and katakana, started with  personal deck of my vocabulary.

It has more than 3300 entries by now. First, I entered words only in hiragana or katakana, but then I found the "Ultimate" template which has line for kanji, kana and English translation. And luckily, the well-known dictionary app Jisho has a connection to Anki so that I can easily send words from the dictionary to my own deck.

It allows me to increase vocabulary lists rapidly - especially now living in Japan. I collect words from everywhere: Anime, manga, music, conversations, advertisement, manuals, office work, streets signs,...

My settings give me like 100 words a day and it's seems quite efficient. I also created another personal deck with sentences and initially I also filled out the kana line for the Japanese reading, but now I leave it as I expect myself to be able to read the kanji used in the sentence.

Generally, I can only recommend using Anki - it's a great tool for personalized vocabulary learning and especially to recommend for learning Japanese. Maybe because Anki (暗記) is a Japanese word and means "memorization"...

The trouble of learning two languages at once

Last year I lived in Spain and faced the inner trouble of trying to learn two languages at once.

For a job opportunity I moved to Spain and I wanted to take advantage of living in another country by picking up the Spanish language.

I used the Memrise app for getting more and more vocabulary and created my own Anki deck to collect more words myself which I either saw on streets, heard in conversations or in social media. I also started following Spanish social media sites covering my interests - like anime. Even acquired a Spanish One Piece manga.

As for the work in the company I didn't necessarily need Spanish, but sometimes emails were in Spanish - same as conversation between colleagues depending on their background. I tried to immerse to get more and more palabras, but having conversations was still troublesome. I felt more comfortable in reading as it gave me time to understand.

And I didn't start from zero, a few years before I started some self-studying and participated in a course in Valencia, yet still a lot to be learned.

But I was in a conflict: I was also studying Japanese. I even brought a few Japanese manga to Spain to read sometimes. And as Japanese is a much bigger challenge to learn - especially character-wise, I actually didn't have the time to do both. It's actually too much.

Some people asked, if I don't mix it all up, and at first I interestingly replied that it wouldn't be a problem, since it's about two completely different languages. So I thought, but in hindsight I was totally wrong...

It actually caused chaos in my brain, because while trying to speak Spanish I sometimes accidentally almost (and possibly sometimes did) mixed it up putting a Japanese word into a Spanish sentence.

A funny example was the usage of "to drink". In Japanese it's 飲む (nomu) and in Spanish it's "beber" and "a drink" would be "la bebida". However, as I mixed it up, I created a new word called "nomida". So basically my brain took the Japanese infinitive of verb to create a Spanish noun. Total mess, but kinda funny.

There were probably more examples, but that's the funniest one. As mentioned before I filled my memory with lots of vocabulary using Memrise and Anki in Spanish, but I did the same for Japanese. Probably because the learning process was kinda similar (even though) different characters - the way of remembering vocabulary remained in a similar pattern.

As Spain also has anime conventions I went to one where I you could watch the movie "Your Name (君の名は). It was in Japanese with Spanish subtitles. And it really summed up both my back then language priorities. I was able to understand most of the movie, partially the listening Japanese and also through Spanish subs.

Still apart from that, my priority was Japanese and it definitely distracted me from Spanish. For language learning it's definitely better to have full focus on only one like I have now with only looking into 日本語 - that's the best way to actually learn a language. After leaving Spain and now living in Japan, it's really effective with setting my priorities straight.

My personal conclusion was actually also like: As Japanese is for many reasons more difficult to learn I figured that it's also better to learn it the earlier the better. Maybe one day, I go back to learning Spanish again, although I still passively absorb it by social media or listening to working colleagues talking.

Did you have a similar situation with setting priorities on languages? Please tell me yours in the comments!

How I will continue to follow One Piece

After watching One Piece for around 15 years and especially in the last few years in the original dub with subtitles I recently decided to take another approach...

I was mostly following the anime being around 20-30 episodes behind the broadcast and was on the way to reach episode 800. Through some spoilers I was aware that there will be an emotional fight between Luffy and Sanji soon and checked that volume 84 will cover exactly that.

And with my will to take my Japanese skills to the next level I decided the following step:
- watch the One Piece anime that far that I can continue with reading volume 84... in Japanese!

While being in Tokyo I bought this very volume and caught up with the anime that I could start reading in it's original form.

To explain, it's not my first Japanese manga, but mostly I bought manga where I already knew the story like some Dragon Ball or Detective Conan volumes. And of course I had to look up lots of kanji and vocabulary. But the important ones ended up in my Anki deck.

But the situation now is different: I'm now reading a manga story (where I know what happened up until now), but need to understand the upcoming development of the Whole Cake Island arc in Japanese.

It's a challenge, I need to read the chapter twice and more to get the meanings. And I wouldn't say I get every line. Sometimes I'm happy with understanding the just some words in a sentence. The furigana are helping a lot, but sometimes the kanji itself are helping more to get the meaning than the furigana.

Often used words I look up in Jisho.org and add them in my Anki deck. Generally I realized: Once I dived in reading it all in Japanese, having the time to focus on it really works. I see progress in my understanding and reading skills.

By now I already continued with volume 85 and will keep on going this path.

Starting with Japanese

When you start learning a new language it's really important that you have a connection with it. In terms of Japanese many people including me got the initial interest by watching anime.

It's not about just watching it - the interest for the language comes by understanding some words in subbed animes - it's probably with something easy like ありがとう (arigatou => thank you). Even some people who aren't interested in learning a language prefer watching anime with subtitle just because they like the way the language sounds. It's where the connection starts.

Another step for the interest in Japanese is that animes include music, especially the opening and ending themes. The lyrics are written on the screen while the music is running.

With the help of subs you can at least understand the text, but when you see the language in its written form it's still something where you have no idea how it works at the beginning. It's because it's simply too much at once. You are simply overwhelmed!

The easiest way would be to learn the Hiragana letters gradually with some important words you may have already collected while watching anime. Same goes for Katakana - because you'll notice the amount of foreign words for which they're used.

But how to learn these letters? Print out a chart of both sets and try to find some mnemonics! For example た looks similar like meaning: ta. Try to memorize these characters step by step and be consistent repeating them daily. Also try to build some words.

I'd recommend to have an deck with the Anki flashcards on your phone. The Android version is even a free one and you can have an account which is connected with the PC version. Such decks are free available to download.

And the following is also an interesting way of collecting vocabulary: Create your own deck where you collect your words in Hiragana. I'd start with easy stuff like nouns you can see around you.
Example: かがみ (kagami => mirror) or いす (isu ==> chair). Continue with adding more and more words you get from lists, from anime or even songs.

This is just an example how to start - but that's just the beginning of a long way...