#glossika

[rigelmejo]

2/1/2023 Update on progress using Glossika Japanese. Lessons listened to: 37

This update is mostly for my personal tracking later. 

Downsides: I am struggling to get myself to listen to lessons. Based on time I have per day to listen to audio in the background, I should have gone through at least 100 lessons by now, and easily could’ve gone through 300. So 37 is... disappointing. I do relisten to the audios sometimes, so even though I’ve only gotten through 37 lessons I have probably listened to lessons 100 times. I suppose the upside is relistening to lessons before moving on is the actual way glossika recommends to study - listen to the prior day’s lesson before listening to the current day’s lesson. However, I was not trying to study how glossika recommended. I was trying to cram through as many audio lessons as possible so I could review if simply doing that and only that, was enough to learn a decent amount and see improvement. 

I desperately would like to get through all 312 lessons in a month. Just so I could finish and prove to myself if it helps or not! 

Since for me, a decent portion of these lessons are a form of audio review for me, so I do not need to be spending as much time on them as I am. I wanted to use these to review my knowledge and reinforce it, and strengthen my listening skills (and pronunciation knowledge) since I currently recognize more words by kanji meaning than by actually knowing their pronunciation (meaning I can’t recognize in listening words that I’d know if I was reading). So I feel I am... wasting a lot of my own time here, drilling beginner things I already know and working through the glossika lessons too slowly. Which is a bad perfectionist habit of mine that I often fall into when doing japanese study. oops.

I unfortunately have no solution to this tendency I have to avoid going through the lessons. I clearly am not super interested in the glossika lessons lol, they must bore me. For anyone else considering using glossika let this be useful to you: if you find it so plain its hard to listen to, it might be hard for you to push yourself to go through the lessons. The lessons are GOOD, don’t get me wrong. I just find it much ‘easier’ to make myself listen to a condensed audio of a video game (even though I know less words), or to play a japanese video game and look up words, than I find it to get myself to listen to simple boring daily life sentences in japanese/english. Just my personal focus issue. My brain loves to be challenged I think, even though I think in some cases like this it can make things less efficient.

Side studying I’ve been doing in japanese: I’ve played about 10 hours FFX and Persona 3 in japanese now. I went through about 300 memrise words in Nukemarine’s LLJ memrise courses before I got burned out with memrise again. I also have been playing like 50+ hours in the Yakuza games with english subs lately. While this doesn’t actually count as studying since I’m using english subs, I do hear the japanese audio frequently and I do think it helps me remember new words I’ve learned recently since I’m hearing them regularly and when I listen sometimes I try to compare the japanese I hear to the english subs and see if the translation changed anything. So all in all lets call the 50+ Yakuza games with english subs ‘mild review’ and count it as 10 study ‘review’ hours. 

So total study time these past 3 months has been: 10 hours video games in japanese, 10 hours japanese audio with english subs (so review but not real study), 50 hours of glossika audio (each audio is about a half hour and I relistened to most lessons 2-3 times so I’m guessing around 50 hours total), maybe 5 hours memrise and trying out the Listlang app, maybe 4 hours on Satori Reader (which later on in my journey I think will be an excellent study tool to prepare for reading but I don’t have the money for a subscription right now). 10+10+50+5+4= 79 study hours. ToT

79 study hours over 3 months. Yikes. I sure am lazy. so in ~90 days I did on average ~50 minutes of study a day. Okay... not entirely awful I guess. I usually make good progress with chinese at 1-2 hours study a day on average, so 50 minutes isn’t way below that amount... it could be way worse. I’m frankly amazed I made noticeable progress in the last few months then, damn, considering it wasn’t like a few hundred hours...

Upsides: Despite my apparently not very high study hours... I actually have noticed significant improvement. 

With Persona 3 - I played it 1 year ago and it took 1 hour to get to the save point. This month, it took about 20 minutes to get to the save point and I was able to get to the save point 3 times. So I was able to play the game 3 times faster, therefore I was able to read 3x faster. That’s a pretty huge improvement. I also was able to look up less words. When I played it a year ago I had to look up words frequently (about once every 2-3 minutes or more) and gave up even trying to read once I got to the school I just skipped text and tried to get to the save point as quick as possible and it still took an hour. This month when I played it I was able to only look up a word around once every 5 minutes, I could read the text fast enough that I did not need to skip text sessions to ‘speed up’ my playtime. I was able to spend some time actually exploring the character’s bedroom and school since reading was faster and therefore much more bearable. A 3 times faster reading speed is a REALLY noticeable improvement, I can’t express just how much easier everything feels when I can read faster. It makes the experience much easier and more bearable. Hiragana words and slang still made me feel very drained trying to understand wtf they meant by guessing, but it still felt 3 times easier than last year lol. 

With Final Fantasy X - I’m noticing improvement AS I play. When I started, the menu was challenging, now I find navigating the menu quite easy and honestly a game menu is a great way to repeatedly practice recognizing words until you learn them. So is the combat menu. It’s like how in english we never knew the word ‘ultima’ or ‘aeon’ as far as the actual attack or creature they mean in a game, but we learn because a game teaches us. This is comforting, we have to learn these kinds of words even when playing games in english... so learning them in japanese is not really much different. So yeah, the pause menu and combat menu are already notably easier 10 hours in then when I started. Common words specific to this game were also picked up fast - I know know summoner, summon, defeat, cheer, pray, temple, monster, magic, boat, port, waruiwa - (used as ‘im sorry this is a bad time’ sort of like sumimasen but casual to end a conversation), a lot of more casual word endings or word forms (Tidus and Wakka...). This is comforting, as now I expect if I played something like say Nier Automata I would pick up the technology words eventually simply because they’re used a lot. Or in Kingdom Hearts I sure would pick up hearts, darkness, light, friends, friendship, worlds, keyblade, fast lol. I am also noticing it’s much easier to follow what’s being said in scenes then when I started. When I started I’d usually understand 1 part of a sentence but not all of it, or 1 sentence but then not 2 more then understand on again. Whereas now 10 hours in I watched the scene on Mihen High Road where Yuna and Tidus talk in front of the sunset. I understood every word of every single line, except 1 single line I didn’t know one clause within it. So I understood the scene Really Well, well enough to compare the japanese translation to the english translation I remember. There’s still lines where I only understand part of them (like when Seymour says ‘Then pretend I didn’t say it’ I understood that line but not the one right before it, or when Gatta says Chappu says spending time with your girl is nice but... I did not catch the part where I know in english he says ‘protecting your girl from’ sin is better. I only caught the ‘your girl’ part beforehand and ‘sin’ part toward the end). But I AM understanding a great deal of full lines, which is fun as I’ve been comparing it to the english translation I remember to see what was changed in english or kept the same. Lulu is... really direct in japanese just like she is in english, which I was surprised by. There’s also a part where Seymour asks Auron “It’s been 10 years, how have you been” or whatever, and Auron literally says “I’m Yuna’s guardian, I’m busy” then walks away. It was just really funny to me how directly he shuts Seymour down. Or when Gatta says when he told Lulu about Chappu, she hit him too. 

When I started playing FFX this month I did not expect that I was going to eventually be able to understand the lines to this degree of detail. I thought at best I was going only be able to follow the main idea. Now to be fair: I’ve played this game before in english so I have that remembered english script in my memory to help me guess unknown words or lines. I expect a game I’ve NEVER played before would be considerably harder. However, this speed of progress bodes well for if I wanted to play Nier Replicant or Nier Automata. Apparently the navigation menus will not take more then a few hours to get comfortable with in japanese, and after enough hours I will be able to enjoy understanding the detail of a lot of the japanese lines. Which is definitely a good motivation to want to play more games in japanese - I am very interested in comparing the japanese script and choices with the english translation, and knowing it will be possible to do that is exciting. 

With manga - an unexpected improvement. I’ve been opening up manga from time to time. I am finding some easier to read now. I think the improvement is mainly due to reviewing information I knew already because I’m using japanese more. I still find heavy adverb use and hiragana word usage hard and that’s where a majority of the unknown words I don’t understand but that are important are. 

Basically - I’m seeing a significant reading improvement in both skill and especially speed at 3x faster than last year, ability to follow the speed up japanese in of cutscenes/follow the speed of japanese in audio much better than before, significant improvement in recognizing stuff I’ve studied before faster/easier, and some small but solid improvement in vocabulary. I did not expect any noticeable improvement until I’d studied a few hundred more hours, so honestly this is really great and a lot more than I expected.

In regard to the Glossika lessons: I DO think they’ve been helping, I Do think they’ve been reinforcing my knowledge I already knew and giving me good review, and while I struggle to listen to them often I do think they work similarly well for me as anki/memrise do except without requiring 100% of my focus when I do them. So the glossika lessons (audio flashcards) are easier for me to actually study. While I wish I was doing them more, I’m happy to say I do think they’re helping me improve like I hoped they would.

#rant #study plan #progress #january progress #glossika #glossika japanese #japanese progress

[marissalearnslanguages]

Glossika Challenge [Extended]

So, I ended up winning the Glossika Challenge last month. What did I win? 3 free months of Glossika!

Last month I managed to reach 3000 reps in one month with Italian. it was nice review for me and I feel like shadowing the native speakers did help with my pronunciation a bit. however, I did not have time to explore the other languages and the other courses. So, I want to take these next three months to explore some of the other languages they have to offer. 

Here’s a rough idea of how I plan to use Glossika:

Italiano (A2+) - Doing the Glossika Challenge with 100 reps of Italian a day was good. The only problem that I had was that I did not maintain 100 reps a day, so I would play catch-up every few days. I don’t want to do 400 reps of just Italian in a day again. I started from zero with Italian instead of doing the placement test. The sentences were pretty much all review but I did shadow along with the speakers and I think that helped my pronunciation a bit. I’ll just continue with the course and continue with shadowing. I’m not sure what my Italian level is. I feel like I can read more than I can produce (write/speak).

中文 (A2) - Why not? This is supposed to be a focus language for me right now anyway. I do have plenty of resources for Mandarin outside of Glossika so I may not keep up with their Mandarin course.

日本語 (A1) - I keep pausing and restarting my Japanese studies. As a result, I feel like nothing really sticks in my brain. Maybe having a small Glossika habit can help me to solidify some Japanese basics and keep a more consistent study routine going until I reach a higher level.

Türkçe (A0/A1) - I don’t know how Turkish found its way into my language studies but I’m having fun with it right now. Might as well do a bit of Glossika while I have it.

한국어 (A0) - I started the Korean course at 25 reps (5 new sentences) a day because I wanted to test out if Glossika could help me solidify Hangul in my mind. Now, I just want to continue to slowly learn Korean.

Irish (A0) - How many resources are out there for learning Irish? Not as many as more popular languages. I plan to learn irish in the future. I plan to take in person classes next year if possible. There’s also the future learn course. But, while I have the next three months of Glossika for free, I want to try out the Irish course.

#glossika challenge #language learning #langblr #glossika

[cloud-based-and-rainpilled]

My husband, family, friends, and Welsh hyperfixation are the only things sustaining me right now

#my good omens hyperfixation was replaced by welsh. unreal #i should be learning more industry stuff and adapting my craft but i’m dumb!! #i have an > 1 year streak so sorry about the duolingo usage #duolingo #fck them tbh lol #i use memrise too #memrise #it’s… a’ight #and glossika! better #glossika #saysomething is so stressful but it’s helpful #say something #say something in welsh #cymraeg #cymru #i’m not even welsh lmao #personal #find this later miracle aligner #lotta great youtubers too #spanish is so much easier and i’ve tried my whole life & i can easedrop & read but i canne speak #accent fine words… disappear #wales #i read a fuckass article where this guy brought up corruption in wales/discrimination #in terms of forcing the language which is good to call out #but also he just thought welsh ppl didn’t exist and it’s like bro why do you hate yourself?? #‘these resources are pointless’ i use them fck you?? #then welsh propaganda from his distant brother on the official wales website like y’all wtf #i’m drunk #also they should be independent wtf #i got fired

[mejomonster]

Idea: I'd drastically improve my chinese and japanese if I listened to my audio study files when playing Final Fantasy XIV.

Aka me trying to justify the amount of hours I'd sink into that game if I started it

#rant #to be fair #i replayed nier replicant and listened to 30 glossika japanese files #i gotta say. i think my japanese improved #altjough the study ratio was like 1/3 of time #cause i played like 60 hours. but only listened to maybe 20 hours of study matetial #side note idk HOW i spent 50 hours on nier #i sure did hyperfocus goddamn #time FLEW by

[tamartia]

Glossika Challenge - Update 1

Indulging myself in the influencer lifestyle to take advantage of a 30 day free trial to Glossika, a language learning platform which I hadn't heard of until about 2 weeks before the challenge started. In exchange for 3 social media posts, you get a 30 day free trial and a challenge to complete 3000 "reps" in a single target language during the month of October. People often ask me for language learning app recommendations, so if I find an ADHD-friendly (and free!) context to try one out, I'll happily take it.

I was excited about Glossika because it not only uses spaced repetition as a core learning strategy, but it actually uses the phrase "spaced repetition" to describe itself! An email I received today says:

Glossika strengthens your memory in 3 ways: 1. Glossika recombines chunks of phrases into new phrases 2. Each sentence progresses with similar patterns 3. Spaced repetition review means you'll get just enough review to not forget.

After just 100 reps on the first day, I have not seen any of the recombination (unless you count reuse of subject pronouns) promised, but I'll hold my judgment on that front until I have more experience on the platform.

My three main complaints after a single day of 104 reps are:

Recall versus review - this is by far my biggest complaint, and it's a huge piece of how spaced repetition is supposed to work. The difference between recall and review is that when recalling, you don't see the answer you're supposed to provide. A single Glossika "card" shows you the English sentence, the target language sentence, and the TL IPA. None of these go away with increased repetitions of the card. I worked to increase my memorization by manually turning off alternately English audio and English text halfway through a set, but this is unintuitive and cludgey. I did a few review reps after about 97 reps of learning new sentences, and the reviews were formatted exactly like the new content. We'll see if this changes.

No grammar explanation- you'd think basically every language learning platform would have learned from Duolingo's mistakes by now and would at least try to provide grammatical and cultural context to complement their language content. Glossika does provide IPA, which is great, but memorizing whole sentences as a single memory "chunk" feels simultaneously overwhelming and infantilizing.

I would love to see a program successfully integrate such contextual information into its lessons, but I don't think that integration is a requirement. It'd just be nice to have a mouseover icon or even a separate page where I can see explanations of formality, context, and alternate translations-

Whether I think a platform must provide such context depends on the platform's goals and advertised use cases. Memrise, for example, does not claim to be solely responsible for teaching you a language the way Duolingo does. I'm not sure where Glossika falls along this spectrum, but so far it feels like the clunky whole-sentence memorization of Duolingo with the lack of context and set dressing of a pure spaced repetition system. And I can't even upload my own content!

Marking as easy - when I marked a sentence as "Easy" because I'd seen it already many times, it just reduced the overall number of reps in that session from 25 to 20 rather than introducing new vocabulary. This isn't necessarily bad, but it bothers me personally.

#glossika challenge #glossikachallenge #langblr #language learning #jaime speaks

[ruhua-langblr]

Duolingo Sucks, Now What?: A Guide

Now that the quality of Duolingo has fallen (even more) due to AI and people are more willing to make the jump here are just some alternative apps and what languages they have:

"I just want an identical experience to DL"

Busuu (Languages: Spanish, Japanese, French, English, German, Dutch, Italian, Portuguese, Chinese, Polish, Turkish, Russian, Arabic, Korean)

"I want a good audio-based app"

Language Transfer (Languages: French, Swahili, Italian, Greek, German, Turkish, Arabic, Spanish, English for Spanish Speakers)

"I want a good audio-based app and money's no object"

Pimsleur (Literally so many languages)

Glossika (Also a lot of languages, but minority languages are free)

*anecdote: I borrowed my brother's Japanese Pimsleur CD as a kid and I still remember how to say the weather is nice over a decade later. You can find the CDs at libraries and "other" places I'm sure.

"I have a pretty neat library card"

Mango (Languages: So many and the endangered/Indigenous courses are free even if you don't have a library that has a partnership with Mango)

Transparent Language: (Languages: THE MOST! Also the one that has the widest variety of African languages! Perhaps the most diverse in ESL and learning a foreign language not in English)

"I want SRS flashcards and have an android"

AnkiDroid: (Theoretically all languages, pre-made decks can be found easily)

"I want SRS flashcards and I have an iphone"

AnkiApp: It's almost as good as AnkiDroid and free compared to the official Anki app for iphone

"I don't mind ads and just want to learn Korean"

lingory

"I want an app made for Mandarin that's BETTER than DL and has multiple languages to learn Mandarin in"

ChineseSkill (You can use their older version of the course for free)

"I don't like any of these apps you mentioned already, give me one more"

Bunpo: (Languages: Japanese, Spanish, French, German, Korean, and Mandarin)

#EDIT: Added a great resource for ESL and African languages that weren't found elsewhere #I do NOT recommend memrise and will talk about it another day but #langblr #duolingo #duo #language learning #language learning apps #mandarinblr #resource #reference

[salvadorbonaparte]

Hello! You said on that duolingo alternatives list that we could ask for a more detail on the resources list for any of the languages? Could you do one for Hungarian, please? Thank you so much for compiling that list!

Hello!

Apart from the list of apps I already posted and my textbook collection I can offer you the following websites:

50 Languages

Glossika

Hungarian Kati

Let's Learn Hungarian

LingoHut

LiveLingua

Loecsen

Podcasts:

HungarianPod101

Fluent Fiction Hungarian

Hungarian Daily

Plain Hungarian

One Minute Hungarian

SBS Hungarian

Learn Hungarian Anywhere

I also have a small playlist with some songs

I don't have a link right now but websites like RadioGarden also offer international radio including from Hungary (I once found a pretty good Hungarian one in western Romania)

#langblr #hungarian #language resources #language learning #I am sure there are more but this will have to do for now #if those truly don't suffice I can do a deep dive #I also occasionally reblog Hungarian vocab lists or other things

[saiph0]

hi hi! what first inspired you to start conlaning? what are some tips you would give to beginners? this is not a call for help what LOL wdym /j/j/j

LOL hi!! thanks for the ask :)

oh boy this'll be a long one, sorry in advance,,,

If anyone has any other tips please feel free to add on!

So I think what inspired me to start conlanging was the dream I had several years ago that started the world of Amatɔqa. In the dream the citizens of the hidden city spoke their own language, though I couldn't recall what was a part of it, so at first I only made up a few words and phrases that are now obsolete.

Another thing that really inspired me to actually get serious about conlanging was the sounds of different natural languages that I found super fun to hear/say.

For example: the "x" sound in the Mandarin word "xièxie"; The sound of Russian; the throaty "kh" or "ch" sound (equivalent of [x] in ipa) of Arabic and Scottish Gaelic; and the list goes on!

As for tips for beginners, man that's a bit of a tough one! It'll depend on what the best-feeling approach would be for you! I'll give some ideas I have though:

The international phonetic alphabet has been my best friend!

If your first language is English, especially American English, you can start out small with this wikipedia article on the ipa sounds we have in English. It was really helpful for me because of how overwhelming the full ipa chart looked to me in the beginning

There's this youtube channel: Glossika Phonics that has a lot of videos on examples of the different sounds in the ipa. It's not always perfect but very helpful for tongue and mouth positioning!

There are some sites that have ipa readers in which you can test out different sounds.

There are also sites with interactive ipa charts that have sound clips of each

Other Tips!

If you like having book resources, I definitely recommend "The Art of Language Invention" by the one and only David J. Peterson. It has so much info on breaking down languages; sounds; grammar; writing systems; and all of that good stuff!

If you really wanna jump into using that conlang and constructing sentences, focus on grammar! I tend to focus on tenses and word order in the beginning because that's the hardest part. Once I figure out grammar, I can make more vocab and just jump into creating sentences!

Experiment experiment experiment! Mess around with putting different sounds you like together and try to figure out which combinations you want to exclude from the language; make random symbols, look at r/neography on reddit for really cool stuff; you can always change stuff later

Definitely look at other natural languages for inspo! What sounds good? What similarities/differences do they have with your first language?

---

Oh god I think i could ramble on forever but I hope this was at least a somewhat helpful start! I'm super open to chatting further if you have anymore questions or just want to share what you've made so far :)

#conlanging #conlang #linguistics #language #conlangblr #advice #thanks for the ask! #asks #i love getting asks tysm LMAO

[kradnie]

glossika having free minority language courses will be the end of me. I downloaded it thinking I'll finally learn Welsh. tell me why am I learning wenzhaonese. I don't even know mandarin. I wanted to learn mandarin and Cantonese. but those are paid. you know what's free?? wenzhaonese and Hakka :3

I'm gonna speak Chinese that's completely unintelligible to most people

anyway I might also learn Catalan thats way more useful I love Catalonia

[king-hunty]

The Struggles of Being an A1-A2 Learner

I am sure anyone who has learned a language in-depth knows what language levels are. But, for those that don't:

Each language is assigned a specific level for each grade of fluency based on written and spoken frequency. It goes from A1-C2 typically, however some languages have their own grading scales of fluency, such as Japanese.

Obviously these are extremely important to us linguists, as they are what allows us to learn these languages in a organized manner. But don't want to get off topic now.

What I really am addressing with this post is the difficulty of being an A1 learner for any language. This is when the language is BRAND new to us. We are learning the absolute basics at this point.

For me, the frustration comes from not wanting to slow down and trying to rush the journey. I want to be fluent now and I want to speak comfortably now. I think in my mind I view A1 and A2 as embarrassing levels to be at because it's the level that children speak at, and I am not a child.

It's quite funny how much it bothers me honestly. It's something I am trying to fix though, as late at night I always get caught up searching for other resources to see if they're better and can help me learn faster, and often spend money and regret it after :,< But, tbh... if I don't slow down I won't learn anything at all.

It's important at this stage to take your time because understanding fully the most basic elements of any language make the advanced stages so much easier. That's why right now I am really focusing on italki classes for speaking and substituting Glossika SV (I know some people hate Glossika, I personally really enjoy it so haters gonna hate). Trying to get that intuitive understanding of when to use one word over the other and what grammar structure is appropriate is so important now because it is such a hard habit to build.

Everyone always talks about the "intermediate plateau" but, I think the elementary level is the hardest to overcome, and is often where most of us give up and drop a language. I personally have never reached above high A2 and have dropped two languages after reaching that point in those respective areas. This time I'm simply trying to get to B1 because once I get there, everything will flow a lot more smoothly.

Anyways, thank you guys for reading! I wish you all the best on your respective journeys!

Hẹn gặp lại!

#self study #vietnamese #language #langblr #vietnam

[rigelmejo]

I just tried Glossikas new site. Which reminded me how much I hate it still! Wooh!

So basically (for those curious), glossika used to make a course of maybe 3000 sentences (or more) per language, aiming to cover up to B2 in a language. Now, I can't find the exact numbers right now but I think the lessons may cover 2000-3000 words, so not ideal for languages with few cognates to your native language. But a decent basis (much more words than pimsleur). The old audio files basically worked as audio flashcard files, with a srs like study schedule you'd study them with (or randomly), which I imagine worked well because I've studied audio files in that manner and it worked great for me. So their old audio files were great! I've downloaded the Chinese, Japanese, French, and Korean old files. Which they no longer sell. Which is annoying as fuck cause I'd happily buy them. But alas, glossika is one of those companies that would love monthly subscription money from people instead of a 1 time 300 dollar payment. (Shout out to Pleco, my favorite language app ever, that ONLY does free stuff and one time purchases to own forever - I respect one time pay models so much, I love them dearly).

Well glossikas new version, is to offer up their audio files as sentences with text/audio on digital "flashcards" where you study 5 at a time per session, in srs spaced repetition format. So basically they redid their audio course so instead of 30 minute audio files and a book (if you want to read too), instead it's in Anki format. I fucking hate it. Why do I hate it? Well for one, you can't buy the old files, and you also can't just listen to the current sentences in that old way of just fucking listening to 30 in a row. You have to stop what your doing, focus on the flashcards since now you MUST read too instead of using it as an audio-only course. You MUST do flashcard format even if like me u take 1 hour to get through 5 flashcards (when if presented in audio only format I can get through 60 sentences aka 2 audio lesson files). For another, I find the new format slows one down. It turns lessons into tiny bite size pieces like duolingo, which to me means unless you're diligent and do 20-60 sentences a day, you're going to finish courses AGES SLOWER than when using the prior format. Just... they used to be one of the few Really Good actually could get you to "know enough to converse and maybe immerse" level in a language resources that was suited to audio if you preferred lessons in a car/during commutes/during walks/during a busy fucking life. If you could focus for 90 days and just make time to listen, then listen as review regularly for a while, you could make a fuckton of progress! Their new model means unless you're the kind of person who goes wild on anki and gets through thousands of cards a year... you will progress slower.

And if you ARE someone who does well with anki? I recommend anki INSTEAD. BECAUSE the user made anki 6k core deck, the memrise nukemarine Lets Learn Japanese decks, the clozemaster app japanese common word deck, are ALL sentences with audio going up into 6k sentences or more! Covering more content than glossika, free! In the same flashcard app format! The ONLY reason id use glossika (personally) instead of those 3 alternatives, is if I want an audio only method that's just FILES and no fucking app I have to drop everything and force myself to manage to focus on. (I'm really really bad at focusing on flashcards apps I move at a snails pace on them which is why I prefer audio flashcard files in 30 minute chunks so much more). And even if you like audio files in large chunks? Clozemaster radio mode IS THAT. GLOSSIKAS only plus is they have real people speaking, clozemaster has machine audio. But the anki decks and memrise decks all have natural audio!!! So compared to modern glossika, why even use modern glossika??? Why pay a monthly subscription fee when free better alternatives exist???

All this to say that... today I tried glossikas modern website flashcard bullshit again. They don't even have an app. I was annoyed at its weak points (the time it took to load audio, the lull in time over and over again), again extremely hyper aware I could go fucking open clozemaster instead for a better experience.

I'm glad I downloaded their old audio files, because they are genuinely good. But god I am so frustrated and disappointed with their modern offering. It has the same content, but in some ways presented more difficult to access and use. (If you prefer app srs flashcard format though you would find it easier to use now, and if you do want to specifically test glossika and work thru it at a quick intensive pace it may be worth the money for you - it does do a decent job of covering good a1-a2 level stuff and at least preparing you for immersion at maybe a B1 level for Japanese. However if money is a concern, again I think ankis core 6k user made deck, nukemarines LLJ memrise decks, are way better free alternatives that also use real natural Japanese audio and cover more material in the same srs flashcard manner).

#rant #review #glossika #so absolutely ruined mh own evening with their stupid site #it kept crashing yrying to load the audio #which is so annoying cause i know how convienient and useful their old audio is!! i use it!!

[finnishfun]

Hello. First of all your blog is great and I really admire the effort you've put in to help people learn languages. In what I believe is an old post called "Finnish Resources Masterpost" (post/165413666541/finnish-resources-masterpost) you provided a link to Glossika. This link is no longer accessible. Do you still happen to have the Glossika audio files available anywhere? I would really appreciate it if you shared them, they seem to be entirely lost media...

Hi! Thank you! :)

Unfortunately it looks like I only downloaded the PDF files back then, but I guess these are supposed to be used together with the audio.

Maybe someone from my followers have them downloaded?

They were originally @lovelybluepanda's files but got deleted after a while and I don't know if these ever got reuploaded anywhere. Looks like her blog is no longer active or maybe changed url?

Maybe some followers can help. :) Other than that it seems you can use their website or app but those are not free. :(

[cloud-based-and-rainpilled]

Been saying some really basic stuff in Welsh wrong this entire time lmao brb gonna [redacted]

#we ain’t never gonna make it #aside from being Bad ™️ pls just. at the bare minimum supplement duolingo #i’m on duolingo and memrise and glossika and saysomething and nothing has helped more than just random youtube videos of enthusastic welsh p #<- ppl. because they care #i cannae pronounce shit!! fuck!! #personal #oh well #find this later miracle aligner #like a month & i’ve learned basically nothing useful. ofnadwy!! #cymraeg #cymru #i’m not even welsh lmao F #and no one to practice with. i should’ve just stuck with spanish smdh

[mejomonster]

I love reading.

I frequently select novels which are just So Long it takes me weeks to months to finish them. Making speed reading through a couple a week (my dream) unobtainable. I mean, I like reading nonfiction too, and maybe because of old college cramming skills I can read 2-4 400 page nonfiction books a week if Im okay with feeling tired all week.

Which, I have some niche recs if you're into non fiction: Stalking the Wild Pendulum by Bentov, When the Body Says No by Gabor Mate, Peoples History of the United States by Howard Zinn, The Reality of ESP by Russel Targ if youre into remote viewing history, Psychic Discoveries beyond the Iron Curtain by Ostrander and Schroeder on archive.org if youre into parapsychology and looking for other names to look into further since tbh this book is more journalism-entertainment than nonfiction reference also this books fairly old now, Immortal Remains - from a philosophy angle it was okay but frustrating to me except i got some good sources for further reading mentoned... but I prefer the UVA youtube lectures and the research they do since i just tend to prefer reading collected information myself, The Emotion Code - not necessarily informational in a verified sense but if youve ever considered paying money for an emotion code practitioner i liked the book cause i could just Learn the method and try it myself... free... and test and decide for myself regardless of if ifs placebo if its actually helpful to me or not, The Ancient Science and Art of Pranic Healing - this book doesnt have studies sourced as its more about teach The technique but i like that it lists sources for further reading - and its another case of "well i can just learn, test it on myself, see if its helpful or not" also im an absolute nerd about older books and the considerations that went into X book at Their time compared to now... if you ever saw my language learning textbooks collection from 1800s books to 2023 books youd know.

Speaking of here are some Fascinating Language Learning books. If youre curious about the Nature Method as in learn a language IN the lamguage by comprehensible context I recommend Ayan Academy playlists on youtube and the books: English by the Nature Method, Lingua Latina, La Francais Par Le Methode Nature, L'Italiano Secondo il Metodo Natura, Poco a Poco. (I also have many a youtube channel lessons recommendation for this learning method as I prefer it). For textbooks to learn primarily with graded reading materials Ive got: Beginning Chinese, Intermediate Chinese, and Advanced Chinese by John DeFrancis, Spanish for beginners by Charles Duff, French for Beginners Charles Duff, A Japanese Reader: Graded Lessons for Mastering the Written Language by Roy Miller (steep learning curve but decent preparation for reading actual novels and news which is great because i find a lot of japanese textbooks hover at beginner-intermediate but dont bridge all the way to necessary skills to understand complex texts). Cool books: Chinese Self Taught by The Natural Method by John Darroch (old af and some information is outdated and the pinyin system Hurts so focus on actual hanzi - but the grammar explanations are the easiest ive read and enjoyed reading), Japanese in 30 Hours (its basic japanese but it explains basic grammar understandably and helps you get a basic mental framework for the language making further study, i felt, much easier to adjust to, and its a short quick Study Up Basics book - id especially recommend it to people planning to learn using immersion/comprehensible input asap as it will give them a little bit of a skeleton to lean on), japaneseaudiolessons.com is an interesting introduction to audio flashcard lessons (fun fact glossika is just an expensive version of audio flashcard study which are just... audio in target language then a language you understand so you comprehend the sentence meaning and can learn new words/grammar from it by listening) and the site has a free grammar book to accompany it AND the site makers made kanji teaching books that come the closest to providing prewritten mnemonics for meaning AND pronunciation of japanese kanji in book study form. Something i appreciate since heisig books make you Make Up Your Own mnemonics so i find his books useless, and many japanese kanji teaching books that use mnemonics focus on meaning and skip teaching pronunciations since its harder to include multiple pronunciations in a mnemonic. For Chinese hanzi study, my favorite book is Tuttle's Learning Chinese Characters: (HSK Levels 1-3) A Revolutionary New Way to Learn the 800 Most Basic Chinese Characters, the book provides mnemonic stories for pronunciation including tone, and meaning, and example words. Its the backbone of how i learned the first few hundred hanzi and Learned How to personally remember more which made continuing to learn hanzi much easier. Since that Hanzi book, ive been desperate for a similarly written book for japanese kanji and... japaneseaudiolessons.com has the most similar kind of kanji books, but theirs is a drier and therefore harder read.

Anyway wow I got lost ToT back to my older point ayy. I have no time to read these fucking long ass fiction books I keep wanting to read ;-; my focus can resolve to read a nonfiction book in a frantic 6 hours of Research Mode then burn out and lose focus until im up for the next book. But i pick these long ass fiction books, and oddly i seem to read fiction slower so maybe im like savoring it idk. But i took like 2 months to finish Silent Reading by priest so. Yeah i WISH i was getring through these novels a touch faster ;-; i have so many i wanna read. Perplexingly i also read manga super slow, so i guess any fiction i slow down and savor or something

Books im trying desperately to read, to finish, or to get to after finishing my current books: Observations by janon (a fanfic but a great one and im only 30% done after 1 week intensively reading), kamikaze girls (1/3 done then i forgot the book so its been a few months), Old Fashion Cupcake (1/4 thru and the single volume is LONG), Devilman (1/8 through maybe), Sudden Silence (this book is like 200 pages frankly i have no idea why i didnt manage to finish it in a few days), Game of Thrones book 1 (in my defense its an audiobook so im only in like chapter 3 theres a cool youtube guy who does different voices and music for the chapters), The Expanse (i just started), The Dark Forest (book 2 of three body problem series im half done then i forgot it), In The Dark book 1 (1/3 done and its just... not quite getting my attention as well as other stuff i recently read), Little Mushroom (likely to start more solidly once i finish Observations), 2ha (i got volume 4 babey!!), Can Ci Pin (id like to restart and read in earnest im in a sci fi mood lately so i think ill get obsessed with this once i start), Breaking Through the Clouds (my instincts tell me this is most likely the only crime mystery novel thats going to manage to catch my attention after Silent Reading by priest impressed me so damn much its like in my top 5 books i ever read now), discworld (im just reading little snippets as i have time), Final Girl Support Group (1/4 done then i got busy and forgot it - this is by Grady Hendrix and so far ive loved everything they write, I highly recommend My Best Friends Exorcism it was great), Guardian (i have the english translation but im... eternally chugging away at the chinese and at the end of the First Arc which ive reread in chinese like 4 times now i need to just GET PAST THAT PART TO NEW PARTS and i dont really wanna read the english translation until ive read the original so i can compare), so many fucking novels by priest in my to read list... sha po lang, jinse, huai dao, guomen, lord seventh, faraway wanderers, the blue seal, tai sui, liu yao, lhjc, and again Can Ci Pin... then I have Peach Blossom Debt and Imperial Uncle, and Golden Stage on the to read list too... and Thousand Autumns, Peerless. And Wu Chang Jie, and Nightfall (evernight). Oh I also started reading Vampire Hunter D omnibus and that fucker is like 800 pages. Frankly most books i buy are 400-1200 pages. Usually 600 at minimum. Oh i also started reading One Piece manga, got to Sanji's introduction arc, then like most things... i forgot i was reading it and havent picked it back up for weeks. Basically... i try to get through a book but if it takes me more than 3 days (nonfiction usually takes me 1-2 days) then i risk forgetting i was reading it, forgetting for months, picking it back up and having to start over cause i forgot it for too long -.-;

Anyway my point

#rant #theres some nonfiction and fiction recs under tje cut but #its also just kind of a rambling mess lol #rec list #if you have any favorites in that fiction section let me know #it might help me prioritize what the fuck to read next lol #apthough i predict im gonna be reading observations for another month first

[paruecake]

So lately, life has been nice. And by nice, I mean that I feel like I'm finally finding some stability.

I have my desire to actually do things back! This is the first time since my breakup in May that I've felt like doing anything other than reading, passively watching shit on Netflix, or playing with my kitten.

I've been watching anime again which has been great. I've burned through a couple series already that only have one season so far. I've been reading a ton of light novels. And! I'm learning Japanese!

I'm trying not to burn myself out on learning Japanese because I honestly really do actually want to learn it. At the very least, my main goal is I'd like to be able to watch anime without subtitles. My goal after that is to be able to read light novels and web novels in Japanese.

Though it's hard to not go all out, since I don't really have much else going on in life outside of work and my cat. I haven't made much progress in the friend department, but I'm kind of hoping that will eventually happen with time and maybe just slowly putting myself out there in the discords that I'm part of. And also spending more time at work when summer is over.

Anyway, my main methods of learning I think are going to be glossika, anki, youtube videos, and other resources I've bookmarked online for stuff like grammar. I also have a genki textbook that I got years and years ago when I first attempted to learn Japanese, so I'll probably look at that for grammar too.

IDK mainly I think I'm going to focus on the top 1,000 most common Japanese words. I'm trying to ignore the vocab lists in Genki because for my purposes, I don't want or need to memorize the words listed. At least not for my first words. Obviously I want to memorize them eventually, but I think I'd rather stick to more commonly used words.

#.txt

[the-old-book-town]

A study plan...

I'm actually terrible at sticking to study plans. I haven't done anything remotely structured since I took Japanese for two semesters in college, and this still won't be structured in the least, but it's more than I've done for the past few years. However, I've finally decided to plan a trip to Japan in 2-3 years and there's literally no better motivator.

I'm rusty on literally everything, I haven't been watching shows very often let alone reading, so I'm open to reviewing the basics this time but I'll try to mostly concentrate on immersion. Really, I just need to expose myself to the language more and it'll come back.

I want to resume my long put on the back burner translation project I started years ago. I was recently re-reading the translation and...I am both amazed at what I managed to accomplish and still not satisfied with the level of writing and translation. I kind of want to edit (re: fix...re: retranslate...) it, but if I do that it probably won't be finished for the next 10 years lol.

When I want to play a video game, play all of my Switch games in Japanese! Mainly I have wanted to 100% NEO The World Ends With You for a while now, and this one is great for language practice.

For listening practice, @mejomonster introduced me to glossika Japanese audio so I'll use those occasionally to review the basics (mostly grammar, N5-N4 vocab I haven't forgotten despite not using the language for so long).

Finally, for more listening practice, just watch videos in Japanese with native speakers talking. Can be about literally anything, but how regular people speak is WAY different from how they speak in dramas (and forget about anime lol). Can be let's plays, or, I follow the actor Hongo Kanata's youtube channel because he's a huge pokemon nerd lol.

#japanese self-study