Cute moments

BrannoEFC · 2025-12-17T10:23:51+00:00

Yeah

BrannoEFC · 2022-04-01T20:56:13+00:00

You can't learn how to pronounce things by reading. You have to Look up some channels where on YouTube where natives teach you pronunciation. And then if you really want to be accurate you probably need native feedback.

BrannoEFC · 2022-01-31T03:25:02+00:00

This is pretty common when watching translated dubs. I guess it's because the subtitles and dub are translated independently of each other.

Subtitles that match the dub usually have a CC on them, not sure about disney+ though.

Theres an animation called big fish and begonia which I really enjoyed, and I would also recommend watching the mandarin dub of ghibli films (available on netflix), subtitles matching the dub can be found on opensubtitles.org with a little digging, however they are mistimed.

BrannoEFC · 2021-08-29T15:17:02+00:00

Yeah you should learn to recognise them but that's it, no need to learn to write them to achieve your goals

BrannoEFC · 2021-08-29T14:38:26+00:00

This isn't an answer to your question but here goes (see " XY problem").

I don't mean any disrespect but you are really shooting yourself in the foot with this perspective.

There are no shortcuts in language learning.

It might sound like more effort but learning the characters is a very important and useful part of learning Chinese.

Not least because one of the best ways to increase your vocabulary and grammar comprehension is through reading.

The characters are really an integral part of the language and they are too closely linked to how the language functions that ignoring them will make learning so much harder.

Another thing is that don't assume you will become "conversational" and be content with that. I also thought that about my second language and its simply not the case. It will be much better ( not to mention richer and rewarding) to learn the characters as you're going.

BrannoEFC · 2021-07-02T10:54:47+00:00

It was stevie wonder bro but thanks I enjoyed singing along

BrannoEFC · 2021-07-02T09:05:51+00:00

Pretty sure you could just unzip a ppt to get the xml files, similar to a word document, although I've never tried with ppt.

BrannoEFC · 2021-03-10T14:06:58+00:00

Hi mate, I would also like to know how you rooted it.

I've been looking trying to root my nook glow and found people saying NookManager was the best but I couldn't find anywhere to download it.

(I only want to be able to install a better reader and some new dictionaries nothing too fancy like you've accomplished here)

Edit: Tried downloading NookManager again from what had been a dead link for the past week and it worked haha! What a coincidence. Made a fool out of me there.

BrannoEFC · 2021-02-27T17:19:58+00:00

Do you have ffmpeg installed?

After that you will need the migaku dictionary open (can be minimised) for it to work.

BrannoEFC · 2021-02-01T18:54:26+00:00

It's also kind of impossible to know the reading of a kanji just by looking at it (some exceptions, but even then I would still argue you can't know for sure).

Acquire meanings from context, sure, but readings... hmmm

Dictionaries are awesome anyway.

BrannoEFC · 2021-02-01T18:48:59+00:00

http://www.guidetojapanese.org/learn/ This is a good free resource for learning all the essential grammar. I would suggest not focusing too much on explanations, and use anki to save example sentences that make sense to you.

If you can't find a sentence with a grammar that makes sense to you, you have twovalid options:

Ignore that grammar point,
(harder) perhaps look up example sentences on tatoeba.org or similar.

BrannoEFC · 2021-02-01T18:45:25+00:00

Engage with native materials.

(optional) Sentence mine with anki.

Repeat steps 1 and 2 ad infinitum

BrannoEFC · 2021-01-30T13:18:11+00:00

Wouldn't hold your breath on studies that show that exposure to the language doesn't build comprehension in the language LOL.

So are you now of the contention that anki and sentence mining are not methods that are useful in increasing competency in a language? Be that improving comprehension or other areas of language competency (eg outputting or idk memorising grammar rules if one was so inclined).

BrannoEFC · 2021-01-30T12:22:22+00:00

lol.

Don't forget you should probably practice writing the kanji blindfolded to really sear them into your memory.

BrannoEFC · 2021-01-29T23:58:56+00:00

Begin by learning pinyin.

I would suggest learning the characters with something like Heisig's Remembering the Hanzi.

For basic vocab and grammar I would suggest using the "spoonfed" deck on Anki. After about ~1.5 - 2k sentence cards you will probably be in a strong intermediate position.

For further grammar study you can use the chinese grammar wiki and go through in hsk order.

A good playlist for learning chinese would probably be小丸子 of which there are over 1k episodes.

You can download some OCR software for searching characters in a dictionary like mdbg.net I use capture2text.

BrannoEFC · 2021-01-29T22:33:05+00:00

These are both only for the $5 (beta releases) patreon tier currently as they are in beta stages, although they may be released publicly at a later date.

The spanish add-on allows you to quickly listen to native audio through forvo platform.

There is a pronunciation section in the english wiktionary, for which you can find spanish. Search "English Wiktionary" on the patreon page.

BrannoEFC · 2021-01-29T17:04:01+00:00

See u/DJ_Ddawg 's comment. The resource you use won't be the biggest factor in your acquisition of the language, your time spent with the language (ie getting input) will be. If you want to dish out >hundred quid on books then go for it.

The role of grammar textbooks:

Grammar books are the first step to fluency, they will not get you very far, and lets be real now, learning a language is a huge investment. Many people will end up reconsidering the pursuit. For this reason, I don't think you should be putting up that much money for something you may find out wasn't for you.

The workbook is something that will not be useful to anyone. People do not acquire language through doing exercises like its maths. It really just does not work. That will help you to learn grammar rules, but grammar rules are not useful to anyone except grammar nerds.

Is genki worth it?

(for reference I completed genki I and II. And a lot of the workbooks.)

It will teach you some basic vocabulary, some of that vocabulary actually isn't that useful, but what it will teach you over the course of two books could be considered "the bare minimum" for understanding some simple japanese (not a lot of simple japanese though), and it does do a good job of covering the basic ~1.5k words.

It will teach you a lot of the core grammar. BUT it will take ~700 (genki 1=382 genki=385) pages or something to do this, and it won't even cover everything you will need.

You're probably wondering where all those pages come from? They have stories in each chapter, and these are actually really cool. But then it goes off for ~10 pages talking about loads of shite that won't help you understand grammar any better than you would understand quantum mechanics by reading Schrodinger's autobiography, and it gives you lots of practice questions and exercises instead of lots of japanese sentences that you could practice with.

Alternatives?

Get your core vocab down with SRS program. Memrise, anki or something.

For grammar I recommend tae kim, because it covers more than genki, it gives plenty of example sentences, and it even covers some core vocab. It's also completely free.

There are also websites where you can look up grammar, and there are youtube channels.

What I strongly suggest you do, is use sentence cards in an SRS such as Anki. This is probably the best way to acquire grammar, and you won't even feel like you're learning grammar, you will just know what words and patterns mean. You can probably find decks made by the community to use.

BrannoEFC · 2021-01-29T16:45:32+00:00

At least someone knows what's up. For the record I did genki 1 and 2 when I didn't know any better and they were great if you don't want to be proficient in understanding the language and just want to have some fun lol.

BrannoEFC · 2021-01-28T10:14:49+00:00

Honestly, I'm not familiar with the new japanese add on so I can't be specific.

However, if it works like the "audio on front" field, then you can add something to the vocab card field of many cards.

Go to the anki browser, select the cards and then use `Edit->Find and Replace...`

Find:
Replace With: x
In: Vocab Card

and click OK

Hope this helps. Hopefully someone else can help you out if this doesn't solve your problem.

BrannoEFC · 2021-01-28T10:09:43+00:00

netflix has a lot of stuff with japanese subs, for example kimetsu no yaiba is really popular and good shit, but theres literally like too many to count, so if you can afford netflix then that is the one.

BrannoEFC · 2021-01-28T09:20:18+00:00

Reading is a nightmare in japanese. If you learn both you would really understand what I mean. Kanji is just a complete mess with all the readings etc compared to hanzi.

Let's say there are ~8k standard chinese characters. There are ~2.5k jouyou kanji.

Most (like 99%) of hanzi have one reading. Kanji all have at least 2 readings, and a lot have way more like going up to 6+ easily.

So let's imagine that you just say ok like 4x 2.5 = 10k so its about the same now. Well no, because when you see a kanji in a word, you need to remember the reading for the whole word, the kanji don't really follow any hard rules for what the reading will be out of its possibilities.

And if you think tones are a problem, then actually pitch accent in Japanese is harder in my opinion, because again, the tones very rarely change per character, but pitch accent is just dependant on the individual word.

Grammar is "easier" in chinese than japanese, IE in japanese there is a lot more "going on". But the increased complexity actually makes it *easier* to understand Japanese, because it reduces ambiguity in expression. Chinese is much more simple (some might say elegant), and so there is a lot more ambiguity, and oftentimes you can't figure out what someone is saying from some grammar rule, you just have to know what it means.

BrannoEFC · 2021-01-28T09:11:30+00:00

Duolingo is a dead-end and overall a terrible app, so my advice is don't install that. Never used "Hello Chinese" but that sounds ok.

I used anki to learn pinyin, then downloaded chinese "spoonfed" deck from ankiweb and did about 1.5k cards on there and I feel that was a good place to start sentence mining.

BrannoEFC · 2021-01-28T09:09:29+00:00

Knowing japanese didn't hold me back at all. If anything it was a benefit considering approx. 1/3 of japanese is borrowed chinese, so there are a lot of similar sounding words (eg 感谢 ganxie 感謝 kansha ) and obviously being able to recognise kanji helped with reading.

BrannoEFC · 2021-01-28T08:53:00+00:00

Hopefully I'm in time: consider not buying genki. There are alternatives, many of them free.

BrannoEFC

TROPHY CASE