arxaseus

Grammar is always a pain point. Been doing Japanese for a few years now, but I always mix up things like no, ni and he (not all with each other), nvm ha and ga.

Late to this weeks entry, but my study is going okay. Few days full hour each, few days just doing 5 mins. Been more on the 30 minute mark though. Maths suffered greatly, and this week has just been hectic and had really bad news a while back, so not in the greatest of spirits. Still, managing to do a bit in each day. I actually put off new lessons for my Japanese and just did reviews the whole time, some days the pile still surpasses 100 despite giving it my all each day. I guess it's just like that at times.

Doing new lessons for Spanish using Migaku, new app to me, but most of those words I already knew, or could tell due to similar sounds to English. Elephant and Giraffe and others are all very similar. My GF's native language is Spanish, so sometimes she ends up saying words like these but in Spanish, so I know what she's saying, and I now totally understand the confusion. There's a lot of words out there that need more attention than just knowing what it looks like but being able to pronounce them. It'll be many years before I can manage my Spanish as well as she manages her English. Also, she's keen on picking up Japanese too, so we might both go a combined Duolingo/MaruMori/Busuu route, along with other resources.

Now if I could also just convince her to join me in my future Lojban and Irish studies...

Sorry to hear, energy levels are still hard to get right despite maturing/aging, it's one of those things you can't really ever get right 100% of the time, even up till your 70s. Hope you feel well enough to start again soon.

A good teacher can make a huge difference in your life. I had okay teachers but none of them made me go mad for learning like I am now for languages and such. I think some random person on IRC did that and I don't even know their name anymore.

You get that study high after a good day, it's very worthwhile just for that, lol.

Honestly, I think one thing nailing me down lately is sleep. As soon as I get on track of that, and end up being less tired in the day, I'll be able for more. Body needs adjusting.

Did a 50 minute lesson of math yesterday, I'm enjoying maths more than I have done when I was in school. The test I did the other day, I'd use to crack down and melt from anxiety in attempting tests years ago. But that's becoming less and less of an issue the more I expose myself to questions and tests, the less the punch they have. Still not over the fear fully yet, but doing a lot better. Also mind, I'm pushing myself into this direction too, with no other assistance from anyone else so the climb is going to be harder. But more worth it in the end I hope.

There's books with audio, but I lost my credentials to download them again, so all I have is the book. Also it doesn't come with any workbook, and the online resources for the book cost a lot per month. I'd probably pay for that in the next coming while, once I settle into more of a deeper and more structured routine. Again Irish is the hardest for me to get into, so again, waiting until I'm more prepared to chew into it.

The grammar is a bit more hand-holdy and ordered in a way that's a lot easier to digest. They have SRS for grammar, as well as specific grammar drills, games, base vocab SRS and achievements and yearly wrap ups. Basically you are getting multiple language features for the price of a single app. Things like WaniKani are good, but you pay for a certain amount that MaruMori covers and that and then some. So value wise it already beats out WK, and tons of people love WK for it's SRS. It's basically best value where you get most other app features in a centralized app. It's not perfect, but it just has a lot of value baked in that's hard to find elsewhere. I think Renshu is the nearest thing, and even then the grammar lessons on that are somewhat lacking by comparison.

I use paid services more often than not, I'd love to learn without having to pay, but if a service is good I'll use it. The only language I can even think of to learn for free would be Lojban, and that's because it's so niche there's literally no demand for it, so there's no products for it. Maybe after a next language cycle when I feel I'm just going to maintain my already learnt languages, I'll cruise on into Lojbanistan.

I'm not sure how I am these days. I mean I'm studying, but I don't feel like I'm doing enough still. Mind, I've been only doing 30 minutes a day of Japanese and 30 mins of Spanish, so it's not my usual hour each, which is probably why it doesn't feel as fleshed out as I want. I'm sort of not exactly in the right spirits where I can feel like I'm on top of things yet, despite the efforts.

Also, really happy I'm managing the 30 minutes of maths. I had a test today and 70% passed it, with 3 of the questions I had no idea what they were talking about, so I'll take what I get.

Next to this, still haven't touched my Irish. Again it's sort of hard to start it when what you are given are very meager learning tools for the language. Books only work so well without the spoken word, and apps that do spoken word, have terrible learning practices, so it's bad on both ends. I keep ranting about this because it's constantly a source of contention for me. I learn Japanese on MaruMori, the SRS they have on that app makes all the other apps I've used be put to shame, including Anki. I seriously wish there was more out there like MM but for other languages. Literally feel so spoilt using this for Japanese. It's not perfect still, definitely way not enough practice lessons for grammar and such. And their streak system is very unforgiving. But somehow I've only missed a single day in the past 340+ days, so I have that going for me.

I'm hyped to learn more, it's just, when push comes to shove, it's hard to have the energy in me to do more, I guess? It's hard knowing what my problem is exactly. Just off I guess.

I thought I heard something about this too not too long ago. I might keep my head up and look for something feasible. I'd love if they released a Pokemon Blue in Irish. Doubt that exists though. Maybe though.

Never knew about this, but I'll probably only stick with the singular account for now. I follow a few zines, and most of them for languages are sorta dead, so no idea how much traction those smaller communities would take up and how dispersed I'd be with multiple accounts.

Cheers for the advice though.

I never thought to make a post about Irish or the like, but I might at some point. It's just I feel inadequate to start talking about it just yet, so early in my Irish learning journey. Also on the other both ends, there's Japanese and Spanish too, but I also haven't seen much threads on those here yet either. I like Lemmy, but I guess it could use more activity. I'll see if I can post anything sometime soon then, to see if I can get the ball rolling.

I appreciate you posting these threads however, they're nice.

Good luck on rejigging the sleep, it takes a fair amount of effort to just go to bed on time, especially so if you just want to stay up and do more since you're on a roll or something.

More on the ball but still not on the horse. Studying my Japanese and Spanish a lot more. Still have my Irish untouched, but also doing a bit more math again, so there's that. What happens is I do studies at random times throughout the day, and if I'm waiting on someone for something I just study until they're ready. So when I'm on Warcraft waiting for my friend to tuck in his kids, I'm studying Spanish for about 15-45 mins. Or if my girlfriend is just out to the shops, I might do a few mins of Japanese, or the like.

Maths is still by far the hardest to get back into. There's a lot of instilled perfectionism from schooling that I have yet to get over. I do honestly like maths, but it's also the most taxing. So the Irish would be a lot easier to get into than my maths.

Also sort of put off my Irish due to me hating Rosetta Stone, and the Duolingo Irish is sorta ass. There's a new app called Sionnach that I found, but it's in very early Alpha, so it sort of lacks a lot of content. Feel sort of clueless as how I'm supposed to learn on it either. Just has me spell out sentences without going into grammar or phonetics, but it could just be a me issue.

I still don't feel on the horse yet, but I feel at least forcing myself to study, on the down periods of the day, is helping. Also helps that I've been having better sleep hygiene recently, as well as taking vitamin D pills, so mood is also somewhat up too.

Still struggling to get on the horse again. Been somewhat mired in a depressive episode, so it's hard getting the motivation to do anything, even play video games. Still managing to do the 5 mins or so a day on each language to keep the streak alive, but my hearts not really in anything at the moment.

Genuinely have no idea why I'm so down these days either. Nothings really changed.

In other news the new Duocon was on, and it was going on about removing the AI tools and such and that's sorta cool they did the uptake on removing the AI toolset they were going to implement. Still not exactly keen on Duolingo as a platform, but at least it's slightly less worse. They're really pushing for those points being the main metric, and honestly, hearing that 130 is the go to for employability at least helps give me a target to aim for on Duolingo other than just keep a streak. Not that I'm actually trying to find a job in Spanish or Japanese. But setting goals to target is nice, otherwise you get a bit aimless at times. 130 is just a number, and completely arbitrary, but language is already arbitrary enough so more arbitration isn't going to cause me much of an upset, so I say, why the fuck not just have an arbitrary goal.

It's roughly 11pm now. So I'll try and kick into gear a bit more once midnight passes. Just so I've done more in my waking period. And it should keep me good for the Friday streak too. The software I use has sort of lost it's pull, so I think I'm just going to use the older method of just setting up journaling/timers separately to Steam apps. Going to use Obsidian, some random Linux pomodoro timer, and lofi girl music on YouTube. Should be enough to set me going when the next hour starts. I'll probably look more into timers after this post to get ready, and also mentally prepare myself.

Was doing super well until I wasn't anymore. Also trying to claw back the workload. Today's been really difficult too. I think it's okay to sometimes just survive a while before you can start to bloom. We've all been there.

Missed 2 days of Irish, not back to back, but it's just one day I was having an episode (still did JP/SP), and then the other day I was knocked out for about 22 hours.

Out of all the languages I study, Japanese is the easiest to study, because I can do parts of it every so often, and also do more dedicated longer routines added and the workload is doable. Irish or Spanish has to have studies done all at once, and it's harder to manage to slot the time around them then. I'm really all for this hourly SRS based learning, really helps motivate me when I think about languages.

Wall of text about study software, be warned:
Next to this, I ended up getting new study software to try out, since I find new wave of software at times boosts the mood for focusing more. "gogh: Focus with Your Avatar" [sic], but it was very obtuse. It has less in the way of managing tasks and timers, and also ended up having a lot more requirements for completing their achievement system. I'm okay with using a study app for 100 hours, but so long as I can study using the timers I prefer, but this app has study with a timer counting down 100 hours, then counting up 100 hours, and there's tons of nitpicks like that where it felt it was unnecessary fluff. Next to that, it seems to be very poorly optimised. Even when tabbed out to other apps, it would still constantly be at 5% of a Ryzen 9 processor, meanwhile my other study apps are roughly <1% and only sometimes will boost to 2%, which isn't a problem. gogh, I constantly hear my PC whirr, and the noise is distracting. Also the music lineup tends to be sort of on the otherside of relaxing, which doesn't help. But yeah, that software didn't end up helping me lock in like the other 2 things I tried. I'm back to Spirit City again, despite it not having the best time management, just because it has a better atmosphere, and that helps me focus in more.

I plan on making my own software too at some point, but atm I'm swamped.
Also ended up getting a part time job as a volunteer, so will have my focus drift a bit, but still should be able to manage that and the 3 hours of languages. Maths on the otherhand, I need to dive back into the most, and it's hard jumping into that when it's hard completing these baseline tasks first.

Wall of text sorry. But yeah, studying is going good so far. Always pumped to do more.