🔊 🎙 Listen Every Day Challenge - Fall 2022 🍁

I think it has a lot of potential too. It possibly lacks marketing indeed, I haven’t seen it publicised around the language learning communities too successfully. I logged back in to my lang-8 account to check how it is nowadays and it’s such a shame that it got abandoned in favour of hi-native, but I guess that’s what gets them more money in the end. Lang-8 had really nice tools and many people using it back then, I thought it was amazing to have a place where you could write fairly sized journal entries and have people correct your errors. It gave you the possibility to try to form and connect sentences and trains of thoughts, to actually learn how to express yourself and not just ask a simple question like the hi-native format.

It would be awesome to see LangCorrect thrive and have many people use it, but sadly I don’t think it’s possible to achieve in its current marketing state, especially for any language other than English. It’s still awesome that you tried to get people use it though, honestly. Perhaps it’s the longer entries and journal format that doesn’t attract people anymore?

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Yeahhhh, yaku is just… I’m glad the computer versions work out the points for you because I still don’t fully get the scoring, and keeping track of the dora, and counting uradora, then there’s all the houserules too that may or not be in play.
For ultra pro hard mode try learning all the Japanese names for everything as well :upside_down_face:
(they have some really cool names for some of the plays, but no way am I able to remember all that and try to keep up with the rules)

I’m the same with online play, it’s pretty daunting, I worry that I’ll be really bad and hold the game up for everyone. It’d be great to play in person, (I have a set, it’s Chinese, but still able to play Japanese style, no idea how to play the Chinese with the seasons and that) but it’s hard enough just trying to get one person to play something with you, let alone three.
In the beginning I just went for sets of three and a double and hope that what you get is a legal win (most of the time it is) then gradually try and learn the yaku as you go. I suppose one good thing with the online is that no one can see your face of despair as you try and understand it all.

This would be really great, but like you say, it’s hard finding anything, and people who are willing to participate too. My grammar is terrible, but no matter how much reading I do it just doesn’t really register, I need to be writing it to learn but then that becomes a problem too, it feels that the grammar is holding up my listening abilities too since I can pick out a lot of words now but not connect them, and… learning things is hard :laughing:
The JP server option seems like a good idea, but just talking randomly in a server is daunting enough, let alone in Japanese. My experience with JP servers/quickchat is that words/phrases are shortened in ways that you never would have imagined to be possible :melting_face:

頑張って!On the never ending road to become a Japanese master.

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Listened to both text in Lesson 10 in Try! N3. Didn’t do yet the Listening tests.

Want to listen to more than just to short texts.

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:fallen_leaf: Day 12, 12th of October :maple_leaf:

:headphones: Back to my Home Post

I was watching a Minecraft youtube video series today. Definitely something above my level, but I wanted to see if there is any material that I could use to tempt myself with to put in more effort. I love watching people play videogames, especially if they’re having fun. These people had great energy! Very motivating.

Thankfully, they have captions on Captionfy, so I was able to read along if I wanted to. Also saw quite a lot of Kanji in the baked-in subtitles that I knew, which is always exciting! I think using the font randomizer has helped here, too.

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Main post

On October the 12th I’ve listened to

  • Today’s NHK Easy News
  • Nihongo Con Teppei for beginners episodes 615 – 621
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October 12th!

Today I watched an episode of Madoka Magica, with Japanese Subs.
I had to pause a lot to read the subtitles to actually understand what was being said, but I caught quite a lot of the shorter sentences without needing the subs :slight_smile:

(Home Post)

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Summary Post

October 12th
What did I listen to?: A Series of Unfortunate Events Ep 5
How much time did I spend listening?: At least 23 min (finished the episode), plus rewatched a little of the first part of the episode

Today seems to have been a good comprehension day lol, I feel like it’s so variable how much I understand and I can’t figure out if it’s a function of the material or a function of me xD

Anyway, I can’t believe this didn’t occur to me yesterday - this is the part where they end up with the guardian who’s a stickler for grammar. Maybe her correcting their grammar will help me with my grammar :rofl: This is fun to break down (and feels much more possible than the whole subtitles on subtitles on subtitles scene :joy:)

Let's go!

The first one I noticed today:
If I remember right, in the English version, Klaus says, “That’s Count Olaf!,” and Josephine corrects him by saying it should be “He’s Count Olaf.” So the Japanese version seems to be a pretty direct translation of that, because we get
これはオラフ伯爵 → かれはオラフ伯爵

The next one is really interesting. Count Olaf (posing as a sea captain) gives Josephine his business card. In English, the joke is:
Every boat has it’s own sail → Every boat has its own sail
An apostrophe joke! Undoubtedly something that doesn’t come up in the Japanese language xD

In the Japanese translation, the same joke:
どのヨットもそれは帆つき → どのヨットもそれぞれは帆つき
She basically corrects him by saying the usage of それは is strange/unnatural. (I think, I had to watch it back like 20 times and I’m still not sure I totally caught all of what was said in the dub. There’s also an interesting deviation between the subtitles and the spoken words here. The subtitles say it’s a common mistake [I know that’s what she says in the English version, so I’m assuming that’s why] but the dub seems to just focus on the fact that it doesn’t sound natural. I wonder if it’s actually not that common a mistake and that’s why the dub changed it :joy:)

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:fallen_leaf: :headphones: softlyraining’s leaf pile listens :maple_leaf: :studio_microphone:

October 12th:

Daily Japanese with Naoko uploaded a new video, so I watched that for today. It chronicles her trip from Spain back to Japan. The ending is actually what surprised me the most: it turns out she lives in Okinawa?! I’m pretty stoked to see some footage of the area going forward. Also, Naoko needed to take a connecting flight: first she traveled from Spain to Qatar, then from Qatar to Japan. The first flight looks like it’d be 6 hours and 40 minutes, according to Google Maps, and all she got to eat was a tiny bag of pretzels?! :unamused: Granted, she bought herself a sandwich before getting on the plane, but still.

Another fascinating post! I’d probably agree: I don’t know every kind of mistake native speakers often make, but it doesn’t seem like adding ぞれ would be as common a mistake as adding an apostrophe. Still, I have no clue what a good solution here would be, so props to the localization team for coming up with anything at all.

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Did the Listening exercises for Lesson 10 and Lesson Text 1 of Lesson 11 of “Try! N3”.

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My powers of avoidance were very strong yesterday. That coupled with a noisy household meant I only manged a few minutes at the end of the day.
Re-listened to the Genki II dialogues from the previous day and then added a new 1 minute one.
Future me will thank current me for the hard work but its so painful and depressing right now :face_vomiting:

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October 13 :headphones: :books:

I listened to this reading of 雪女 multiple times. The first time I was trying to understand as much as possible and follow along with the subtitles. My concentration didn’t last long though, so I just put it on repeat a few times and listened passively while doing something else. I understood some, but certainly couldn’t tell you in any detail what was going on. I may read the text at some point and then try listening again.

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Didn’t post yesterday but I relistened to more of 仮面病棟. I encourage anyone looking for an audiobook to at least try a sample of it, it’s a pretty easy listen excluding a few points where they dive into medical words, but if anyone is interested I can give you a cheat sheet of the big ones that come up :slight_smile:

Today…I feel like crap. I got my fall covid booster and per usual I’m feeling the side effects. I’m kind of mindlessly listening to youtube videos as I called off work due to fever and not being able to focus. I watched a couple random things but so far this was the most interesting one:

Basically it’s about a woman who was in a cult from 10 - 35 and when she got out she made a manga about it. You can see that here: https://bookwalker.jp/series/161090/
I decided to buy it, but don’t know if I will read it soon. The video had a scattering of words I didn’t know but I’m not in the mood to look things up so just rolled with it.

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Lots of listening today yesterday. Fell asleep typing this draft.

Several Nihongo con Teppei.
Re-listened to Pimsleurs Lvl 2 lessons 3 and 4, and listened to lesson 5.

Watched the youkai videos that omk3 posted. Shiritori always draws me in.

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:fallen_leaf: Day 13, 13th of October :maple_leaf:

:headphones: Back to my Home Post

Some more Minecraft videos! Just because my listening comprehension is low, doesn’t mean I don’t benefit from it. I keep hearing people shout in indistinct Japanese in my head now, so I say I’m doing more listening than ever before. :laughing:

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Main post

On October the 13th I’ve listened to

  • Today’s NHK Easy News
  • Nihongo Con Teppei for beginners episodes 622 – 626

P. S. The next post turned out to be the reply to previous one, here it is:

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Listened to the first part of はてしない物語 Chapter 1 today. As expected, at first I did not get much as we jumped right into the world-building part, and funny incomprehensible words flew left and right past my ears. But after 5 minutes or so I started over, and then it became much clearer and I could continue to the end of the audio file (which was ~24min iirc). It also helped that I slowly started to remember bits and pieces of the story.

What happened so far: We listen in on a meeting of interesting beings of the world (a mountain, a stone-eater, a will-o-the-wisp, a dwarf and some others I did not properly catch) and they all are travelling somewhere because they are fleeing from a strange phenomenon: Their world disappears. It started small but keeps growing and growing, and everything that gets caught in this void disappears. Even a leg. (I wonder if it comes back when pulled out again, though… I don’t think they discussed such details.)
A dwarf (I think) was asked to describe that void and after having trouble finding good words, he was asked whether it was like a hole. But he said that a hole is something after all, but this phenomenon is truly nothing at all. (I thought that was a pretty smart description.)

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I’ve been listening to NHK TV Japan every night. It is interesting to note that my vocabulary is increasing with the Japanese subtitles. I am noticing all kinds of things in the subtitles that I hadn’t learned yet. I am constantly amazed at how many known words I am catching in the listening part of the programs, as well as grammar items. But mostly my reading is increasing with the subtitles. I try to read the subtitles and then listen for the spoken part to see how correct I am. Good motivation and good practice!

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October 13th!

Another tiny listening day today. Just one episode of Nihongo con Teppei for Beginners so far - though possibly I’ll end up listening to something else later while I’m writing out my diary.

(Home Post)

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Didn’t do much yesterday, just rewatched Chainsaw man and did Minna No Nihongo listening exercises. I want to watch Bleach and JoJo, but I haven’t had the will power to do so the last couple days. I will watch today though.

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:fallen_leaf: :headphones: softlyraining’s leaf pile listens :maple_leaf: :studio_microphone:

October 13th:

Listened to YUYUの日本語 today. The episode was about soba and its history. Pretty interesting; it was kind of like the Kanto area’s answer to うどん, which was first made in the Kansai region.

Bookmarked the manga. I’ll have to give this a watch tomorrow. I’m fascinated by people who’ve gone through cult deprogramming; it’s always interesting to hear what their breaking point is for leaving.

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