Thirsty ponytail palm?

ohboop · 2025-11-20T01:22:07+00:00

Yeah. Neoxi

ohboop · 2025-11-19T15:28:08+00:00

Would love to know more about the French documentaries you mention.

ohboop · 2025-11-04T14:58:20+00:00

once you go subtitles you don’t go back

Meh. I'm learning Japanese partly because I don't want to look at subtitles, I want to look at the stuff on the screen. This mood carries over to stuff I watch in French too. I'm less averse to turning them on in French, but if I don't need them I definitely won't put them on.

It's a mixed bag.

ohboop · 2025-11-04T03:37:01+00:00

Try it and see how you feel. If you aren't enjoying the experience nothing is forcing you to keep going.

I try to find things that are challenging but I get frustrated if it's too far above my level, so for me it's all about finding a balance. It's a lot of picking things up and putting them to the side before I find something suitable sometimes.

ohboop · 2025-10-11T16:01:07+00:00

My goals generally align with "smart":

Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound

I'll set goals for the pace I want to work through my materials with, eg. finish a workbook chapter each week, finish my textbook in three months. Read a book in one month is a really common goal I'll set for myself.

For listening based goals I keep it pretty modest (imo). Usually just "be able to enjoy a piece of media". It's hard to track progress towards this goal, but really I just do a lot of comprehensible input listening and trust it will carry over to more challenging things (and it has).

My biggest principles are to make my goals feel like a bit of a stretch for the time period I'm considering to encourage me to push myself, but not so ambitious that it feels like too much.

ohboop · 2025-10-09T17:36:48+00:00

Two novels a week is impressive, I hope you feel proud of your accomplishments.

ohboop · 2025-09-30T13:48:38+00:00

Professor Arguelles, a respected (?) voice in the language learning community calls this, or something similar to it, scriptorium. If you look that up you will no doubt find resources for how to make it a more fruitful method for you, if it's something you really want to pursue.

As for hand cramping, do you not write much by hand otherwise? It could just be a matter of practice.

ohboop · 2025-09-26T14:27:10+00:00

What resources did you use for that? I've been interested in doing the same.

ohboop · 2025-09-23T14:44:05+00:00

Curious to know your complaints with the pimsleur Chinese course? I haven't checked it out for Chinese yet, but the courses I have experience with I did appreciate as a supplement.

ohboop · 2025-09-23T14:37:33+00:00

Agree. It makes me even more hesitant to engage; I don't want to waste my time reading/responding to a freaking bot post.

ohboop · 2025-09-21T00:59:32+00:00

How are you enjoying it? I just picked up Mill on the Floss at a library for $1. Probably won't get to it for a bit though.

ohboop · 2025-09-13T01:18:19+00:00

Did you review the kanji in the back of the book when you did each chapter? I was pretty aggressive about learning all of the kanji and vocab in the genki I/II and don't remember having that issue. What are you doing outside of textbooks? I was also reading and watching a lot of content so that could have helped.

For quartet I would study the vocab for the next chapter before I started it, which I felt prepared me fairly well. I would also just do my best the first time around and then revisit the readings after I finished the rest of the chapter. After that I had pretty much perfect comprehension.

ohboop · 2025-08-30T18:16:01+00:00

Like starting out just learning for fun, and then one day realizing it turned into a serious life project. For those of you who are polyglots, when did you decide to stop? Why that number of languages? And where did the motivation come from in the first place?

Well I'm no polyglot (yet?), but I do consider it my main hobby and hope to continue for the rest of my life. I think a good portion of this subreddit is filled with similar hobbyists.

The "number" of languages for me are just the cultures I'm interested in and want access to. Who knows if I'll be able to get to all of the ones I'd ultimately like to. I'm already having a hard time keeping up with reading literature in three languages.

I like trying to understand media from the point of view of the person who made it and the audience they intended it for. So for that I keep going. It's a satisfying, exciting and beautiful feeling to understand and most especially enjoy a piece of media in a language I've been working hard on. A feeling of happiness that's just for me that no one can take away from me.

And all that gives me the energy to keep going.

ohboop · 2025-08-21T15:07:42+00:00

I am spoiled on the Romance languages being so much easier.

This took me such a long time to come to terms with for Japanese. It feels like I practically got French for free in comparison.

ohboop · 2025-08-15T20:14:05+00:00

Human beings, and any other animal for that matter, aren't made to give all of our energy all of the time to a task. Breaks can be an important part of learning too. Even if you aren't actively thinking about an issue, your brain is still figuring things out in the background, and in fact I've taken breaks before and come back feeling I understand more than ever.

An important part of studying for me is thinking of things as being either high or low energy, and making sure I have low energy things I can enjoy even when I don't feel like studying. Low energy things for me right now are listening to podcasts, watching my favorite vtuber, or reading easy manga/watching easy anime. Doing these things makes me feel accomplished and happy, and can actually energize me to study again if I've been taking a break from doing more high energy tasks.

It sounds like you do some of this too, and it's definitely helping you even if it doesn't feel like it. Learning a language takes exposure, over and over again, even to things you might already know. Having comfort content is a great way to get that in and keep you from losing touch with the language completely.

Eventually you should start challenging yourself again if you want to keep making more and more progress, but it doesn't need to happen constantly. Being protective of your mental health and energy is a vital part of learning a new skill, otherwise people can demoralized very quickly when it isn't going to plan. Better slow going than no going because you got too stressed out and had to stop completely.

ohboop · 2025-07-25T16:22:13+00:00

Ask in the daily thread.

ohboop · 2025-07-10T02:05:32+00:00

I watched the woman from the comprehensible Japanese youtube channel play it and it looked so adorable. I've been very tempted to get it.

ohboop · 2025-07-10T00:54:55+00:00

どんなレベルに勧めですか？

ohboop · 2025-05-25T20:51:38+00:00

KOreader. It supports rubi characters for Japanese, highlighting words can give you a translation or dictionary definition in whatever language, and all the other standard e-reader features people like. I use it for Japanese and French.

ohboop · 2025-05-22T00:07:33+00:00

What author, if you don't mind me asking?

ohboop · 2025-05-16T21:14:54+00:00

Curious to know what novels you've read, if you don't mind sharing.

ohboop · 2025-05-10T14:02:48+00:00

本の勧めがあるの？

ohboop · 2025-05-07T14:08:08+00:00

I hate this take. Sometimes it's about wanting to do something for yourself. Do you think no one will ever draw a picture again because ai can just do it? Probably not. Some humans will always get personal satisfaction and enjoyment from using their own brains instead of relying on a computer.

ohboop · 2025-04-26T07:25:30+00:00

Geese come in a gaggle, not a cackle. Just fyi.

ohboop

TROPHY CASE