#still fairly unknown. but you have like. spelling (radicals) sound and any familiar hanzi in the word

[rigelmejo]

japanese learning is so fun it will be like

AH! Incredible! i understood that!

then wow. i have. no idea. in the slightest. what i’ve just read/heard. 

at the moment the no idea parts are almost certainly hiragana (or audio only) that is not a cognate to a language i know better. which fair enough. an opaque language is going to be more of a struggle. 

there is a huge payoff in japanese though when i understand something, if that makes sense. like... with japanese, the day i could read a single line (even a tiny one) in a manga in year 2 of learning was IMMENSE. the day i could comprehend a caption on instagram was Awesome. even now, just being able to comprehend PART of a conversation in a video game scene is so cool. just being able to play 2 hours of kingdom hearts in japanese (even though i know the game by memory) is so awesome to just pick up one tidbit of new info - some translation difference, some new word, some kind of formality/informality that was never preserved in the english translation. reading a novel sentence... just sentence... and not being overwhelmed. reading a novel Chapter and actually knowing some of what’s going on... especially when i still remember when i could Not even read a simple manga chapter for preteens and follow the basic overall main idea without the help of a dictionary. japanese always feels like a very long process, journey, to me. but it also makes each smaller achievement feel like a lot when i manage to do it. 

#rant #just musing to myself #also i think a part of the difficulty being lower in chinese for me? #is that once you know like 2000 hanzi or however many hanzi #you start hearing sounds you know REGULARLY and often #so even when there is NO cognate to english. there usually is some similarity to a chinese word i Already Know when i encounter new words #i rarely run into new words now with totally new hanzi and i recognize all the radicals now #so i RARELY run into a hanzi i dont even have a tiny guess of pronunciation/meaning for #whereas japanese? i just do not know the sound commonalities yet. i do not know enough words #so when i learn new japanese words i often have NO existing japanese word i already know to Relate it to in my mind and help remember it #this makes japanese take much more for me to initially remember new things #whereas chinese? the totally brand new is often at least a tiny bit recognizable. and often decently guessable #sort of like with english and seeing new latin or technical terms. i have a vague guess at Least for new word meanings and remembering how #to say/write them #so like. with chinese. i feel once you know a decent amount. the rest gets at least a bit less totally unknown. #still fairly unknown. but you have like. spelling (radicals) sound and any familiar hanzi in the word #to help you figure out vaguely what you're looking at