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.

Confronted with Chinese characters while learning Japanese

As I started learning Japanese from last year more seriously than before I faced a few times the situation that I saw Chinese characters and got extremely curious about their meanings.

Is it being at the airport, running through Chinatown or working in a factory, it's so easy to be confronted with Chinese characters. But when you are studying Japanese it can be confusing: You notice characters which look familiar and some you've definitely seen before. You even know their Japanese readings and also what it means... But you don't speak any Chinese language!

But as an learning addict your mind wants to figure out the meanings. Looking at food menus you often get an idea on what it means, but on the other hand I noticed some train stations in Singapore which I couldn't understand properly.

Then I was in a factory and I could read characters for example for milk. The characters don't feel like 'unreadable' anymore, it's amazing. 

You even start looking up characters via radical search with your Japanese dictionary app (e.g. Jsho) only to find out that the character is only not really used in Japanese. For example I found this on a package of a box:  姆

Looking at the radicals it means "female" and "mother", so it made me curious of course.

Also, I guy from Hong Kong I met in Australia told a good example of how meanings of a Kanji can differ by the example of 湯. In Japanese it's ゆ and a common term for hot water - especially at places like onsen. However, in Chinese the meaning would be "soup" (tang). I found that quite interesting. 

I'm aware that there are lots of examples, so if you know an interesting one, just let me know in the comments.

And how do you feel as Japanese learner being confronted with Chinese characters? Okay, of course it's clear to me, that Japanese Kanji are based on Chinese ones, so maybe I should rephrase: Are Chinese words confusing Japanese learners or make them rather curious?

Let me know^^