I mean if you don’t mind spending some money, you could try a native Japanese proofreader:
Worst that happens is they’re not as good as what you’re already getting and you’re only out $5.
Well, they only do up to a 100 characters.
My diary entries as is are like 600-1000+ characters already.
In addition, this is something I would be doing every day, so at that amount it would come in over $1000 a month on average lol. I’d rather just find someone who will do it at the cost of me doing it in return for them.
Edit: nvm they do 25 for up to 2000. Still a lot more expensive than I would want.
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Ah true, fair point.
Speaking as somebody who occasionally has to tweak English text written by non-native speakers, part of the problem is that once you get past “not correct” there’s not really a clear way to distinguish “not how any native would say/write it” and “not how I personally would say/write it”.
Maybe, but it certainly leads to improvement regardless. And using my experience with japanese, in nearly all cases I have received such harsh corrections it was immediately apparent to me that theirs sounded better and was what I wanted.
Simply anything that has 違和感 I want out. At my level of comprehension it’s frustrating because I can identify a lot of sentences of mine that feel slightly off, but I lack the ability to come up with the right phrasing off the top of my head. Having someone provide natural alternatives gives me over those “tip of my tongue” moments.
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I have another curiosity. What is the most difficult Japanese book/light novel/visual novel you’ve read lately, that wasn’t difficult due to:
*Slang
*Dialect
*Technical/Medical Terminology
*Sci-Fi/Fantasy Terminology
*Archaic Grammar/Speech
Basically, a book taking place in a normal, modern setting, spoken in standard Tokyo Japanese, that just has complex sentences or obscure words.
Hmm like you mean a modern slice of life with regular people and no crazy stuff. Just people doing people things?
I guess カノジョに浮気されていた俺が小悪魔な後輩に懐かれています 6 comes to mind. The author liked to use more fancy words I guess like using 朝餉、昼餉、夕餉 respectively. It wasn’t really a hard read though and I think most people could tackle that series.
The harder stuff I have read lately (which isn’t much) would all be ruled out for some of the stuff you listed. Like hikikomari came to mind as just being a goofy comedy LN that just liked to use a buncha kanken 1 words and characters would say shit like 空は即ち是れ色である in dialogue, but it was military fantasy. SSY as well liked a lot of obscure words but was scifi and not a normal modern setting.
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吾輩は猫である is what sprang to mind for me – it’s not quite “modern”, but the difficulty is definitely “complex sentences or obscure words”, not archaic speech or weird dialect (it has a little of those but they’re not the problem, at least for me).
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Perfect. I had some other books of culture in my cart and this series looks like it would make a fine addition.
Its a pretty based series. Its the only harem I know of where everyone who has read it (including myself) is actually a fan of all the characters involved.
I looked into this one. It’s a head scratcher for sure. Some people love it, some hate it. Doesn’t seem to be much in-between lol. Interesting premise.
Setting is not an automatic disqualifier. I luv me some isekai, as much as it shames me to admit. If you have any isekai recommendations that aren’t overly burdened with fantasy terms, those could be good. Something like Re:Zero. Rem is love. Rem is life.
It’s Soseki’s first novel, originally serialized in installments, and my impression is it takes him a little while to figure out what he wants to do with the book (more poking fun at people, less animal hijinx). I’m interested in the period it’s set in and the Japanese/Western interaction that’s one of the themes, so it works for me. Also as a second language learner it’s seriously impressive how wide-ranging Soseki’s knowledge of English literature is based on the references he drops into the text…
(If you want easier Soseki, I liked Sanshiro – same author, same setting, vastly easier read.)
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Konosuba has lighter vocab usage from what I’ve seen. I didn’t actually finish it, but its one of the easier isekais I know. Rezero was heavier on the vocab.
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Anyways, the thread got sorta revived as it does every now and then, but hopefully that answers peoples questions for now. I will be off the forums yet again for maybe like a week and a half this time.
I have obon coming up (and in general have more free time at work), so I want to get back in my focused state before those things so I can take full advantage of them and get as much studying in every day as possible. God speed as always, and if there are anymore questions ill answer them next Wednesday (I think thats when our break is over. Not entirely sure, honestly.) 
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My wife is by far my strictest teacher, also believes is old school humiliation as a motivator. Along with grammar corrections, will add a few personal jabs for bonus corrections. Will always call me out if no one says it like that or un-natural. In hindsight, probably most of my pronunciation development came from constant corrections and it’s alot of work to always correct someone so have to credit the persistence.
I scrolled by autogenerated English transcript, which is clickable. Moving by timeline just goes too far by several ten minutes.
Quite amusing that there are so many ways to (mis-)spell WaniKani.
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Personally I wouldn’t think so, being multilingual probably is the biggest reason why I’m thinking that input alone is enough to learn a language to a high level. Much like many other Europeans, I’ve learned English pretty much purely through input and comparatively little output. (And if I ever got my Japanese to the same level, I’d be more than happy)
I do get rusty in speaking a language if I don’t speak it, but I’m not really sure why that would matter for the “Comprehension is best learned through input” argument, since it’s just production that is suffering from a lack of output 
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Well, the argument I’ve been making isn’t that lack of production will hurt or impede progress. I’ve just been saying that specific types of production will expedite the process.
Purely for illustrative purposes, if it would take a person 5 years to reasonably read and speak at a near-native level by doing X exercises, and someone came along and said, “If you put a few minutes a day into Y exercises, it will make the process go 10% faster”… 10% of 5 years is a whole 6 months shaved off.
Now, I do realize that some famous polyglots have stated that the research does not support production having such a benefit. That is what I am seeking to challenge. I do read and try to keep up with the research, but I don’t worship it and in this particular case I take issue with it. Perhaps not all types of production increase efficiency in learning, but to say that none of them do seems to be a bold claim.
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Haha, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to start up the discussion again. I really should be spending this time studying 
I just meant to say I don’t think theres a correlation between how many languages you speak and what theory of language acquisition you like best.
On this I am very much with you. I don’t think it’s likely that spending all of your time until the end of your days only consuming a language is the most efficient way to improve your comprehension. At some point in ones studies, adding a certain percentage of production will probably increase efficiency.
I guess we might just disagree on the time (e.g. right from the start or after a year) and the percentage (e.g. 5% or 25% [both examples are random]).
Looking at my own studies (hoping to pass the N2 in December), I’d probably be better of introducing a little more production, but input is just so much more convenient :')
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