Battle of the Language Apps
Sep. 19th, 2019 09:41 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lydamorehouseSo, while Pimpsleur has moved on to teach me how to have the following conversation:
Person 1: "What are you going to do today?" (Kyo wa, nani wo shimasu ka? 今日は何をしますか ? Literally: As for today, what do?)
Person 2: "I don't know. I don't have any money." (Wakarimasen. Okane wo motte imasen. わかりますん。お金を以ていません Literally: Unknown. Money owns not.)
I can only presume this is followed up by person 2 asking, "How much money do you have????" Because, Pimsleur.
Meanwhile, over at Memrise, which is probably one of my favorite language learning apps, even though I struggle with a lot of the writing parts of it, I'm learning things I really need to know how to say:
"What manga do you like?" (Suki ga manga wa nani desu ka? 好きがマンガは何どちらですか? Literally: The manga you like, which is it?)
and
"I like to go to cat cafes." (Neko kafe ni iku no ga suki. 猫カフェに行くのが好き。Literally: Cat Cafe in go my like.)
Important stuff.
To be fair to Pimsleur, I am not likely to have a lot of money to spend in Japan, if I ever manage to get there.
I will tell you all that when I was deciding which language to learn on Pimsleur when I signed up for the app, I seriously considered LYING and saying that I was actually another language speaker trying to learn English, if only because I would LOVE to hear what the pat phrases are that Pimsleur teaches people who are trying to acquire English. Like, how casual are they? I know I'm learning conversational Japanese and there is a whole other language CD set for learning more formal Japanese. So, I'm saying the equivalent of "Hi," instead of "Hello."
Anyway, in case you are wondering the other things I'm doing to try to learn Japanese include Duolingo, Poro, which is a flash card app (which I hate, as I am terrible at memorizing words) but which also has that lovely "read it to me" feature; Bunpo, grammar app which I have yet to get through a single lesson of, because it requires a lot of reading; as well as listening to a number of different podcasts ("Learn Japanese Pod," "The Tofugu Podcast," "Let's Learn Japanese from Small Talk," and "Short Japanese Lessons,') CDs (Pimsluer, while driving in the car,) and audio books (which I bought at some point from "JapanesePod101.com).
Of course, I still watch anime, though I have zero sense that I learn any language from that, despite hearing all the words while reading translations.
You would think that I would be far more fluent than I am, but the problem is that for all of these options I probably only study a few minutes a day, and, as Duolingo loves to tell me, not every day.
Alas.
Luckily, I'm not in any hurry.
I am thinking of asking my Japanese pen pal if I could try writing to her in Japanese. I suspect my letters will become very uninteresting, as I will start talking like a two year old, but perhaps I could do half in English and the other half in Japanese practice. Since I know that one of the reasons a lot of people do international pen palling is to keep up with their foreign language skills.
Anyway, in other news, Mason and I managed to be tardy today. For the first time EVER, he overslept and I wasn't paying attention to the time. He was only 20 minutes late for school, but that still sucks. I have instructed our robot spy to set a reminder for me to make sure he's up by 8 am. Sheesh. I failed Mom 101 this morning--and because we were in a panic, I sent him to school without a lunch.
Person 1: "What are you going to do today?" (Kyo wa, nani wo shimasu ka? 今日は何をしますか ? Literally: As for today, what do?)
Person 2: "I don't know. I don't have any money." (Wakarimasen. Okane wo motte imasen. わかりますん。お金を以ていません Literally: Unknown. Money owns not.)
I can only presume this is followed up by person 2 asking, "How much money do you have????" Because, Pimsleur.
Meanwhile, over at Memrise, which is probably one of my favorite language learning apps, even though I struggle with a lot of the writing parts of it, I'm learning things I really need to know how to say:
"What manga do you like?" (Suki ga manga wa nani desu ka? 好きがマンガは何どちらですか? Literally: The manga you like, which is it?)
and
"I like to go to cat cafes." (Neko kafe ni iku no ga suki. 猫カフェに行くのが好き。Literally: Cat Cafe in go my like.)
Important stuff.
To be fair to Pimsleur, I am not likely to have a lot of money to spend in Japan, if I ever manage to get there.
I will tell you all that when I was deciding which language to learn on Pimsleur when I signed up for the app, I seriously considered LYING and saying that I was actually another language speaker trying to learn English, if only because I would LOVE to hear what the pat phrases are that Pimsleur teaches people who are trying to acquire English. Like, how casual are they? I know I'm learning conversational Japanese and there is a whole other language CD set for learning more formal Japanese. So, I'm saying the equivalent of "Hi," instead of "Hello."
Anyway, in case you are wondering the other things I'm doing to try to learn Japanese include Duolingo, Poro, which is a flash card app (which I hate, as I am terrible at memorizing words) but which also has that lovely "read it to me" feature; Bunpo, grammar app which I have yet to get through a single lesson of, because it requires a lot of reading; as well as listening to a number of different podcasts ("Learn Japanese Pod," "The Tofugu Podcast," "Let's Learn Japanese from Small Talk," and "Short Japanese Lessons,') CDs (Pimsluer, while driving in the car,) and audio books (which I bought at some point from "JapanesePod101.com).
Of course, I still watch anime, though I have zero sense that I learn any language from that, despite hearing all the words while reading translations.
You would think that I would be far more fluent than I am, but the problem is that for all of these options I probably only study a few minutes a day, and, as Duolingo loves to tell me, not every day.
Alas.
Luckily, I'm not in any hurry.
I am thinking of asking my Japanese pen pal if I could try writing to her in Japanese. I suspect my letters will become very uninteresting, as I will start talking like a two year old, but perhaps I could do half in English and the other half in Japanese practice. Since I know that one of the reasons a lot of people do international pen palling is to keep up with their foreign language skills.
Anyway, in other news, Mason and I managed to be tardy today. For the first time EVER, he overslept and I wasn't paying attention to the time. He was only 20 minutes late for school, but that still sucks. I have instructed our robot spy to set a reminder for me to make sure he's up by 8 am. Sheesh. I failed Mom 101 this morning--and because we were in a panic, I sent him to school without a lunch.
no subject
Date: 2019-09-19 03:13 pm (UTC)...
......
I don't even know what to say other than "dang." (Kiera is pretty good at getting out of bed and ready on time, but if we all overslept tomorrow it would definitely not be the Very First Time Ever.)
no subject
Date: 2019-09-19 04:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-09-19 04:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-09-19 04:29 pm (UTC)Japanese is structured very differently than English, which is partly why I think it's hard for English-speakers to learn.
no subject
Date: 2019-09-19 09:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-09-19 10:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-09-20 12:05 am (UTC)My daughter tried taking Chinese as a college freshman (majoring in languages), but dropped it after the first semester. She didn't have a problem with the grammar or even the tonal pronunciation, but she was overwhelmed by the written character language. I foolishly asked, "Don't all the other students have the same problem learning all those characters?" Well, not exactly. Most of the other students in the class were Japanese speakers. Japanese kanji is not the same as the Chinese hanzi, but apparently if you are already used to writing in a character-based language it's a LOT easier to learn new ones.
no subject
Date: 2019-09-19 10:35 pm (UTC)K.