📚📚 Read every day challenge - Spring 2022 🌸 🌱

It’s 300 pages.

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This doesn't even count as a reply *pout*

Actually :face_with_monocle:

… don’t mind me though, I’m just being silly :rofl: Just mentioned it for like have a sentence.

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Fairly short then, all things considered. Anyways, thanks so much again for the update~ I’m pretty excited to begin reading the book myself, though it’ll probably take a few months for me to get through all my current stuff.

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Ok one more response since I'm specifically addressed

@MaraVos

Appreciate the mention. I mean, I’m only frustrated in as much as I wish there was better information out there, like proper studies on language learning, cause the whole process is kinda just do whatever you feel and as long as you’re putting in time trust you’ll get there eventually. And I know it has to be at least somewhat individual but it seems there’s little evidence for what’s truly helpful and unhelpful to do beyond looking at what people did who accomplished it. But then they’re blinkered to only know their own experience (and lots of them very much assume that is objectively the way to go) and things are very confounding. As I’ve said, is the early monolingual transition a massive boost to Japanese learning or is it a thing people who are going to succeed anyway often do because the very act of doing it is evidence of a high level of commitment and tolerance for the hard work involved?

It’s just a thought I’ve been exploring because I did go “ooh maybe I can start using these” a little while ago, and found it quickly a drag, but I’m dumping so much time and effort into this, I’m more than willing to go through things that are a drag if they’re truly worth it. I’m just spending enough time on this I want to do it well.

I think a better characterization is that I just feel very uncertain. Who doesn’t, right?

Quick edit: I should probably add that that has probably frequently looked like me arguing against using monolingual so I understand why you say that and it’s not totally off. It’s just you know, at this point I’ve been kinda leaning away from it so “maybe it’s not so important” is the direction my thinking has gone. But it’s a real internal debate I’m having / have been having, regardless of if I’ve maybe presented a little too much… defensiveness? Unintentionally.

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Oh, please ping me once you get around to reading it - then we can discuss things in greater detail! Also, maybe we could read Vol. 2 together? I will definitely not continue reading it straight away as there is a big wall of book clubs coming up, and I bought a lot of books that I’m keen to dive into, but a few months sounds like a reasonable time scale :blush:

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Summary post :bookmark:

May 9th :cherry_blossom:

・薬屋のひとりごと (90% → 94%)

Finished chapter 30. There’s only like two chapters left? :eyes:

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replies

Aah, sorry Grumpyさん! I admit, I usually read these forums when either a) not yet caffeinated :scream: or b) tired from a long day.

@Daisoujou that makes sense! I am the type that is very comfortable to intuit (rather than logic) my way through a situation, which I only just realized must make language learning less frustrating for me, given how little scientific information on language learning is readily available. I will try to keep my eyes open, and if I see some good science I will send it your way! :slight_smile:

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:eyes: :eyes: Oooh, music to my ears~ I’d love to read and chat with you about them! Having a reading buddy is always great motivation. :3 Should we aim to try to read book 2 in August? September? Whatever works best for you!

So close! I couldn’t do my weekend 薬屋 reading due to Mother’s Day activities, but I’m so excited that we’re so close to finishing the book! :slight_smile: Do you think you’ll read volume 2 afterwards?

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Sounds great! :blush: Yeah August or September would be best, I guess - I’ve committed to some bookclubs but most of them end before that, as it seems. Let’s check back with each other closer to the date, ok?

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o7 I’ll work on volume 1 in the meantime, see if I can slot it in after I finish Alicemare.

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May 9th!
Today I read Volume 6, Chapter 4 of Teasing Master Takagi-san. One of my favourite side characters was in this chapter a lot, so that was fun :slight_smile:

(Home Post)

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Day 39 :heavy_check_mark: :milk_glass:

告白 ~ 45-46%
and chapter 9 of 佐賀のがばいばあちゃん for the IBC

Only a little reading on my main book today, but I finished this week’s section of the IBC, so I read a good amount in general. I actually need to limit my reading time because it’s taking away from other stuff I should be doing, but I’ve said that before and haven’t done it yet, so…

I'll join in on this J-J discussion

Very much agree with this. In other languages I’ve learned, there was a point after which bilingual dictionaries felt like they offered nothing (or just a gross approximation of the meaning), and monolingual dictionaries were the only resource that made sense - they would explain the nuance I was looking for in a way no bilingual dictionary ever would. This transition always happened very naturally when my brain was ready for it.

Definitely same, at least as far as language learning goes. It takes away much of the stress, and it works really well too, for me at least.

That said, I do have some very vague milestones in mind in my journey to Japanese reading fluency:

easily distinguish the words in any given sentence (well, most of the time)
stop being intimidated by walls of text
easily scan a page or more for a specific word
easily find my place in the book I’m reading, even if I’m on the wrong page
stop constantly feeling the need to look up words I sort of know but would feel better with confirmation
catch myself sometimes thinking in Japanese, or finding the right word for something in Japanese but not in my own language
inadvertently read and understand text by just glancing at it (like with ads)
spot and be annoyed by grammar mistakes or typos in what I’m reading (not there yet, although I have spotted a few typos)
be constantly unsatisfied by bilingual definitions and finding myself increasingly or exclusively turning to monolingual dictionaries in search for nuance
adeptly using search terms and sorting through results to navigate my way through the Japanese internet

They’re not necessarily in the order they’ll happen, but I know I’ll feel pretty satisfied with myself when I have ticked all the boxes. To achieve that, I just read. There’s nothing else to do, really, as far as I’m concerned. :slight_smile:

I’m loving the flexibility of written Japanese. Playing with kanji and furigana you can load your writing with all sorts of added meaning. How do all these other languages even cope without tools like these? :sweat_smile: Translators really have a very hard job.

Edit: Forgot to add words! There were several interesting ones in today’s reading, but I’ll just mention two for now: 虫干し (airing of clothes etc to prevent damage from insects and mould) and 景気よく (with gusto, enthusiastically).

The screenshots perfectly illustrate why I hate Google Translate with a passion.

image, image

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Honestly, I thought the same :laughing: And I must say, I have no idea. (The same holds true for dramas where people speak in different languages, and sometimes this just doesn’t get transported adequately for dubbed versions, which is a pity.)

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Today there was no way I wouldn’t finish 坊っちゃん. I hit that place in the story where the ending has truly began and pausing in the middle of that always sucks. Lucky for me, that still only made me read maybe double or triple what I do most days.

I feel absurdly proud for reading this. And I say absurdly because I can’t quite articulate why I feel so proud.

I’ve read other things before by myself.
I had a lot of grammar help (mostly early on).
This is only a graded reader.

I can surely come up with more, but each one I write it only feels like I’m being a negative Nancy.

Even while grammar was clearly making it hard to understand, I persevered. Asking for help when I needed it, but also looking up grammar things myself.

It wasn’t always straight forward what should have happened. And it had a lot of intrigue and slow reveal of the truth. (Although I’m sure smarter people than me would have seen through everything from the beginning. I can see how that would be possible. I had some suspicious, but the story was good at throwing me off the actual truth.)

The story also very much grew on me, or maybe more so the main character. In the first few pages, he is portrayed as very rash and with little sympathy. (I suppose, considering this is a first person narrative, he actually thinks so of himself.) I don’t think the character grew so much, as us readers learned more of what made him tick and, for example, his hatred of lying endeared him to me.

In conclusion, I don’t know why this particular story feels like such a huge victory. I learned a lot, and was reminded of a lot that I had forgotten. :joy: I enjoyed the story. And I enjoyed sharing it with you guys.

Maybe that is it. The shared experience of reading with other people, even though no one was reading the same thing I was. Well, turns out it still makes a difference. :heart:

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I’m proud of you too, so there’s that! First Japanese classic! :confetti_ball::tada::clap:

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Day 34-35 / Calendar

Both days I’ve read 夜カフェ, on the first day, having tons of time, I could get through half of the chapter, but today I only had around 15-30 minutes before the day rolled over, which resulted in 2.5 pages read. This puts me at about 70% of the chapter being finished. I’m confident I can finish it tomorrow and go back to my backup reading.

Next week, besides the usual clubs, both the ハピネス offshoot club and the next ABBC book club starts up, so that will be a ton of reading in a single week.

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I LOVE your panels. They are beautful!

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Congratulations! You have every reason to be proud! It may have been a graded reader, but from the sentences you shared it definitely wasn’t an easy one! And from what you’ve shared of the story you got me intrigued enough to want to check it out myself (some day…the original is L40 on Natively…)

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I haven’t read any Soseki yet (I think), but dropping this anyways as it seems a good resource nonetheless: https://www.sosekiproject.org/

I’m honestly curious how it will compare to other classic authors I’ve read because so far the highest I’ve graded anything is 38. This could be a case of me grading things out of sync with other users again as very few of my Aozora reads have other graders thus far…

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I just finished “Hikoichi and the Young Lord”. After saying the young lord was the one with ink on his hand, the real young lord looked down at his hand, and the other children looked over at him to see if it was true. So HIkoichi was correct, and the old lord was amazed at Hikoichi’s wisdom, and gave him a huge reward. “And that is it. The End.”

So I learned in Japanese how to begin and end
a story:

むかしむかし
昔々 有る ところ所に Long ago, long ago, in a certain place

ところ
所に です And that is it.

Other new vocabulary:

あたたも
与え給う to bestow

ほうび
褒美 reward

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