📚📚 Read every day challenge - Fall 2022 🍁🍂

Haha, while I don’t share the same amount of your enthusiasm concerning butlers, I’ll definitely look into the hotel one. :laughing:

Edit: I just remembered something that I’d like to share given that you seem to love butlers. Have you played Rune Factory 4? The main character can romance a male or female butler (Vishnal/Clorica), so if you’d be interested in playing a farming RPG with dating sim elements, it may be worth checking out and get some reading practice in at the same time – it’s a text heavy game.

Thanks for mentioning that the Apollo one is comprised of short stories. On first glance, it may seem off-putting because I usually prefer long(er) stories, but on the other hand it might make for some good practice because there would be different themes and therefore different vocabulary. I’ll keep it on my radar.

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I do certainly play some farming sims, and I wonder what it would be like to date a butler in one. Sounds like fun. I’ll have to add it to a list. ^^

And just to note, I think the butler story is more of a behind the scenes one (from a quick glance), just like the hotel one is about the personnel running the hotel. ^^ I think I got that impression from looking in the free sample online. I didn’t read, just looked at the pictures though. xD

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Busy couple of days with minimal reading. I’d forgotten today was Saturday and that with that I’m behind on 3/5 book clubs, and there are 2 more starting :anguished:

25/11 none

26/11 2 pages Orange, 7 pages God Bless the Mistaken (to end last week’s reading).

So managed to catch up on the BBC book but I’m still behind on 2.

Tomorrow is unlikely to be good for reading. Monday should be ok.

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Finished 青ブタ9. Basically did 177+ pages in 2 days which is wild. There was a payoff to everything in ch 3. And I’m excited to read the next volume after I finish Shield Hero volume 2.

But I got one more of my reading goals finished. Danganronpa is definitely not gonna happen in the next week though. That’s a 50+ hour game and I think I’m about 5 hours in. xD

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November 26th!

Turns out my cold is Covid and I’m feeling pretty terrible!
I’m too stubborn to break my reading streak though, so I read the next chapter of Teasing Master Takagi-san. It was an especially sweet chapter, so it was a nice one to read today while I was feeling bad!
If I perk up a bit later I might play a bit more of Pokemon Violet, but I’m not sure yet.

(Home Post)

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:maple_leaf: :turkey: November 26th :turkey: :maple_leaf: (Home Post Link)

Musedash 100% achivements done and food digested, that means it’s back to study time.

Read:

  • ホリミヤ ch 8 – I’m definitely still looking up more words than I was in other series, but I think part of that is just because the text is more dense. The low density pages here feel about what the high density pages in よつばと! were; i should go through a chapter and try to get a character count for comparison purposes.

As I suspected, the text density is considerably higher:
Quick count of 1948 characters in a 25 page chapter, so around 78 characters per page.
よつばと!was 1300 characters/ch and around 55 characters per page, looking back up at my previous post. A 40% density increase is definitely nothing to scoff at. Unsystematic comparisons based on a sample size of 1 chapter each, but the difference is definitely noticeable even without stats.

Good Words

幼馴染み「おさななじみ」ー childhood friend (oooh that’s where najimi’s name in komi comes from lmao)
めくるめく ー to dazzle, to blind
調査票 「ちょうさひょう」ー questionnaire
ぼんやり ー idly, carelessly
予鈴「よれい」ー class bell
本末転倒 「ほんまつてんとう」ー exp. putting the cart before the horse (lit “reversing the book end”)
所々「ところどころ」ー here and there
平均「へいきん」ー average, mean
なくす (to lose something) vs 泣く (to cry) ー chapter used both of these close together and it confused me a bit. Looks like if it’s written in kana it’s usually 無, good to know.
くせに ー in spite of, and yet

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Oh no! Hope you feel better soon!

I didn’t comment it, but I saw よつばと!15 in there and nodded silently in approval.
I also definitely end up looking up repeat words a lot sometimes, but at least I usually recognize that I have previously looked it up (余る, recently) after I see the definition again, so something is sticking, even if it’s not the full concept. Look it up enough and eventually you remember it, right? :sweat_smile:

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@lucylavelle Oh noes! Feel better soon! :green_heart:

For Loopers, I actually bookmark the terms I look up in Midori. Because I realized I was looking up so much for the first couple of chapters, I wanted to get an idea of how many I was looking up, so I started adding them to lists for each chapter.

I looked up 222 terms in chapter 3, 124 in chapter 4, and 113 so far in chapter 5. Not sure how close I am to the end of the chapter, but if I go by number of look ups, I’m still some away (this chapter is longer than chapter four). xD

And because I can save the same word to multiple lists, I can see when I save if again whether it belongs to other lists too. Fun to see, and it also helps.

Also feeling like I looked up a ton feels kinda vague and stuff, while being able to say just how many terms I looked up (although it doesn’t cover repeat look ups in the same chapter :joy:, I also typically skip adding those I look up just to double check I do in fact remember them correctly). It gives weight to my feeling over a lot of look ups. xD

And I’ve definitely had words I’ve only looked up until I learnt them. 困る is one of those. Learnt that way before I got it on WK. Yet, I stumbled on it several times before any of its meaning started to stick. And that is only the one I can remember clearly. (I was so frustrated by not remembering that one for a while. :joy:)

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困る AAAAA
I know for a fact I’ve looked this one up at least a dozen times. So you’re not alone :joy:

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Nov 26, Sat of Week 9 of Fall 2022 :maple_leaf:

  • うたわれるもの (Steam) 20 minutes

Until another selection screen, but I don’t what to make a choice yet.

I have spent too much time trying to arrange how to remember Kanji, but yet to tap into “more radicals” potential.

At least some audio makes my reading more active. Will calm down, and read more tomorrow.

Interesting vocabularies
  • 傭兵 (よう.へい) I saw this one first in Berserk. Replaced with unrelated Furigana in context.
  • 紋様 (もん.よう) meaning is just similar to 模様 (も.よう). Kanji is just explanatory. Alternatively written 文様 (but not in this context…)
  • 歩哨 (ほ.しょう) walking (歩く) to do the guarantee (保証 [ほしょう]). Kanji is speaking out when lights out, that is 見張り (みはり).
  • 桶 (^おけ) ok, fill up a carry-able bucket and walk through the road (通う)
  • 盥 [たらい] fun water bowl. Seems to come from 手洗い (て.あらい). Luckily has Furigana.

Phrases

  • 意思疎通 (い.し/そ.つう) the latter part is 疎通 (そ.つう) understanding (通じる) through overcoming estrangement (疎外)

Forgotten ones

  • 怠る (おこたる) neglecting tends to make people angry. For meaning, just recall 怠慢 (たい.まん), perhaps.
  • 円筒 (えん.とう) just recall 筒 (つつ), but the shape of 水筒 (すい.とう)
  • 柵 (さく_) very much like fence sounding? さくさく

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:tiger2: :books: The Tanuki Autumn Onsen :hotsprings: :raccoon:

20221126 - 吾輩は狸である progress: 83.71% :tada:

Just a mini little read today

@pm215, congrats on finishing the book!

:fallen_leaf: Japanese found under the leaves :fallen_leaf:

Meowords

None today

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November 25 :heavy_check_mark: :maple_leaf:

秋の牢獄, 81-90%

November 26 :heavy_check_mark: :maple_leaf:

秋の牢獄, 90% - end!

Yesterday and today I read to the end of 秋の牢獄. Looking at my calendar it took me 10 days, two of which I only read a little. Probably the fastest Japanese book I’ve read so far. I liked it okay, but like 夜市 by the same author, I’d really like it to be darker. The ideas were solid, but the way he explored them was a little underwhelming for me.

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Hard Words Reply

I was reading my linguistics paper for the day and purely out of coincidence noticed this section:

I’m curious about this now, so i’ll read the Grabe and Stollers paper tomorrow, but if “some words seem simply hard for particular individuals to learn for basically no discernible reason” ain’t the truth I don’t know what is. :joy:

Edit: Apparently this is a book not a paper, and there’s no open access or e-book version :rage: and it’s not in any of the libraries I have access to :sob: but I found a used copy of an old edition for like $8, so I ordered that. The book has like 4000 citations on google scholar so probably worth getting anyway

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More hard words replies

If I had to hypothesis, the words I struggle the most with learning are ones that aren’t easily figured out why context. I think that is part of the reason a lot of struggle with onomatopoeia, because as an adverb it could often be literally whatever the author wanted, so while guesses are possible, too often they aren’t that useful.

So 困る for example, at the time I was learning that, I was reading graded readers, so generally short sentences, and that was the verb, and without a lot else to go on, I couldn’t readily guess that it meant to be troubled.

In fact, on WK it is similar. Words with kanji that doesn’t hint at the meaning at all, or only very vaguely, are the hardest to learn most of the time. That lack on context makes it hard to place the word, also in the memory bank perhaps.

But I’m no linguist, nor a researcher, so… :woman_shrugging: But that is the guess I would make for myself.

This also fits in the scenario for Loopers for me, because the unknown words often comes in clusters, so I’ll have a sentence where I look up 2+ words, and the two (or more) lookups are related, but it means I can’t firmly place the meaning in my head/mind’s eye. My understanding gets kind of choppy, if that description makes since. While if I’m just slotting one unknown word into a sentence I otherwise understand, it gets more solid grounding.

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My guesses for why I personally struggle with onomatopoeia-type words include (a) they’re often not important for understanding the general meaning of the text, so if I don’t know them I tend to just skip over them without thinking much (b) they tend to feel “all the same” to me (c) English doesn’t have them in the same way…

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Definitely agree with that. There’s some that I picked up through enough common use, or if they’re featured prominently somewhere モグモグ, ワクワク (thank u, anya), ドキドキ, キラキラ, フワフワ, and じーーーー all come to mind, but usually I see onomatopoeia and my brain just skips over them, even if they’re in a line of text (vs. background text)

@MissDagger What’s interesting in that study is that all the words in the graded readers had a gloss, so any time the participant was seeing a word (also they were all nouns and verbs, more easily measurable for the study and meaningfully important for reading comprehension), they also had the meaning readily accessible (not much of a stretch to say this is similar to doing a quick dictionary search or yomichan hover), and even after 20+ times they still had trouble remembering some words! Seeing multiple unknown words at once in rapid succession is a solid guess though, I wonder if anyone’s tried looking at that… may have found a potential research topic :thinking:

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Home post :bookmark: Nov 26 :maple_leaf::fallen_leaf: :snowman_with_snow:

・(empty)

I’m taking a day off due to limited time on a report with a deadline SoonTM. Didn’t want to risk getting completely engrossed in another volume of Honzuki :caught_durtling: The new arc is too exciting.

Edit:
realizes I can’t check off box for today

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:maple_leaf: :jack_o_lantern: :snowflake: :christmas_tree: November 26 :christmas_tree: :snowflake: :jack_o_lantern: :maple_leaf:
Home Post

Loopers :infinity:

As I had hoped, there wasn’t much left of chapter 5. Only really one conversation plus like two screens. So I finished that off and even though it is less than half an hour until midnight, I’m planing to start the next chapter. It is one of the shorter ones, but don’t think I’ll finish it tonight, unless it is a very smooth reading experience.

So glad to be back reading this, it is quite enjoyable. A bit sad that I’m now kinda posting myself in the Loopers threads, but I have all the earlier discussion from people to read after finishing each chapter. :slight_smile:


Hard words reply

We don’t use them much in Swedish either, at least I don’t think so. That can definitely be a factor.

The problem could partly be that the answer was so easy for them to find. They didn’t have to work to get the meaning, or more than glance at the English gloss. I’d definitely consider that a factor. Sometimes when I use the vocabulary sheets for book clubs, I definitely notice that I tend to need to look up the word again if it wasn’t one that instantly stuck. Although that is just a feeling so I could be wrong about my own experience even. xD

But it is certainly true in other learning, something is so easy to understand the brain doesn’t even take the time to put it in memory, so even a short while later the knowledge is gone. While if I’ve had to struggle for the knowledge a bit, then it sticks better. Maths is a perfect example, mathematical equations I had to work to understand how to apply and that I got wrong, I almost always got right on a later test. Equations that I had no problem with in practice, was much harder to remember later because there was no need for my brain to remember them, was there? xD


Also further note on reading the rest of Looper’s chapter 5 today. I looked up 2-3 words that I saw was already added to chapter 5, meaning I added them yesterday or three days ago. :sweat_smile: That did not feel so good. :melting_face:

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Home Post
:maple_leaf: :teddy_bear: :carousel_horse: 11.26.2022 :carousel_horse: :teddy_bear: :maple_leaf:

The last 2 days were more :purple_heart: Pokemon Violet. Had a lot of stuff going on so I didn’t do too much and didn’t update the thread.

Today I read this week’s reading for :shinto_shrine: Kamisama. It was really short and sweet :slight_smile: And a lot easier to read than the previous weeks.

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Home post

Day something to day 56:

Have I read any novels during these last sleepy few days? I think on one day I read some :rocket: ミニスカ宇宙海賊 1.

Extra: :boom: 鋼の錬金術師 7. :scissors: 魔王城でおやすみ 11, and finished it. :hibiscus:

Read-aloud: Monday we3 read some :volleyball: ハイキュー 5, and Wednesday we2 read some of :curly_loop: ミステリと言う勿れ 1, and finished it. :hibiscus:

I was planning to do this challenge to the end of the year to try to get some of these priority novels finished or at least closer to finished, but today I found myself putting some novels in English on my kindle. :eyes:

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:lady_beetle: Home :lady_beetle:

November 26

人間椅子 -

ジョジョの奇妙な冒険52
49 - 115

I wanted to finish the whole volume, but then it was 2am, so I decided to try not to mess up my sleep schedule further lol. This reading included Abbacchio’s backstory, so that was a lot of fun. I also made it to Pesci’s first manga appearance. I’m glad the anime went with the style that they did for him.

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