Updates on my progress

This is a mild update of the personal goals I had when I first started this blog and where I am with my language learning goals. So let us see where we are:

• Korean: I have learned to read and write in Hangul with some confidence and I am proceeding to learn new vocabulary I apparently know around 75 words/sentences according to my flashcards that I can go through with ease.
• Hindi:  I found out through a fluke accident that I know more Hindi than I originally thought I did just by attempting to explain a song to someone and realizing I knew 2/10 words in every verse. Still have not mastered the written script because it is very complex compared to the other languages I know
• Japanese: Through continued work teaching other people Japanese I have vastly improved my grammar knowledge (or just refreshed myself enough) and I can confidently say I know at least 500 kanji (yeah I know not that big of number, but I know both readings!) and still working on the progress.
• Chinese: no progress as of yet

So right now I'm mainly concentrating on Korean, because of a potential job, and Japanese, because I have more resources here, and using my time in that matter. I am occasionally working on Hindi just because it is fun because I get to watch movies. I have gotten my list of languages narrowed down and I think I can update my language goals

Japanese - know the entire joyo kanji list, pass the JLPT level 2 exam, and be a confident speaker.

Korean - Get to an intermediate level, be able to read and write Hangul with ease, and be a semi-confident speaker.

Hindi - Again get to an intermediate level, be able to read and write with confidence, and be able to ease drop the next time I go to Devon to see if these ladies are trying to hose me >_> I see you Indian sellers over there talking about me, I understand things enough to know that.

Other - work on the following languages and get to an intermediate level at some point: Chinese, Spanish, Arabic, French, and Mongolian.

In other news if I end up getting the fun exciting job I'm hoping for I will use this blog to also talk about my experience there because it is relevant.

Language Learning

 In my quest to learn new languages I have run across many different programs that claim to be the best thing since sliced bread for language acquisition, but are far from it. The only way to find this out half the time though, is the waste vast amounts of money on things you will never use again.

A good example for this situation is Rosetta Stone, it claims that you will learn the language without having to do useless drills, but this program does just what it claims not to do.  You are paying up to $300 or more for a program to keep repeating a word at you, I have tried Rosetta Stone in these three languages: Korean, Hindi, and Japanese ...and it was all epic failure and I was very pleased that I hadn't wasted my money on it, but saddened that my friend had. Slowly you are memorizing phrases that really don't make sense like "The plane is on the boy" ...I really would like to find a situation where I would need that phrase, but at the same time never hope I need it. Overall I find it a waste of money when there is a free online program that is literally the EXACT SAME THING, but with more. The program I'm talking about is livemocha.com, where for the small favor of helping other people learn your native language, you can learn 40+ languages for free, and unlike Rosetta Stone you can learn multiple languages at once. It does run into the same issue as Rosetta Stone where you aren't really learning how to write in the target language and are not getting grammar explained to you, but hey  it is free and you can chat with native speakers if you have questions.

Overall opinion: If you want Rosetta stone, please try the alternative version of livemocha.com because you will get a really good idea of what Rosetta stone was going to try and teach you, and this will be for free.


The main language series I use for outside of classroom language learning is the Living Language series, it covers a vast amount of languages and if relatively cheap, most basic sets are around the $30 mark. I thought this series was awesome after I had bought the Hindi and the Korean sets and they are in fact a very good language learning supplement for these two languages. HOWEVER, much to my dismay many of their other language learning sets are not as stellar, the other language learning sets I have run across that involve different alphabets ended up being a huge flop because they went through the entire course using only romanized letters. Yes at one point you did learn the alphabet, but then it is forgotten in the lessons and you only deal with how to spell these words in English. This is not very good when you are learning Japanese, Chinese, or Arabic because you will rarely run into a sign that is in that language, but written in the romanized pronunciation of the word. On the other hand for the two languages I have encountered that this program works for, it does a good job. It has little sections in the chapter that explain culture points, grammar, and just other little factoids that gives you insight into the language you are trying to learn and has CDs that go along with almost everything in the book.

Overall opinion: Unless you are thinking about learning Hindi and Korean, buy these sets with caution because it is a hit and miss. While you may learn the language you are not learning the alphabet so if you just want to be able to speak a language this might be the set for you, but if you want to be able to read, write, AND speak you may want to skip this series unless you are trying to learn one of the two languages states above

Get a different Japanese boyfriend everyday for 300 days

 Learning a foreign language is scary so we all come up with crazy language learning strategies, like the one mentioned in the title.

Get a different Japanese boyfriend everyday for 300 days: The idea is that you will have to speak to them in Japanese or that you will hear enough Japanese you will get better at it, and the constant changing of boyfriends will let you get some variety in the language/vocabulary.

 The problem with this strategy? Well there are several, not all of us can get (or want) a Japanese boyfriend let alone 300 of them. It is just the idea behind it this strategy seems like an easy fix to learning Japanese because it is a hard language to learn. Personally I don't think this strategy will work for me.


 I personally am using a focus on your interest strategy, you find what interests you in the area or culture the language is from and you use it to help you in learning the language. For me it is music and fashion I cannot tell you how many words I've learned from watching musicals (in Japanese or other languages) and just the tangent learning episodes it has triggered.


Kanji example

袖　そでー sleeve


This is normally used in referring to Kimono like the tomesode or furisode, but it actually has other uses!


袖の下-bribe
袖乞-beg
袖文-sleeve length
袖時雨 -weeping

The Goals of this blog

The whole reason behind this blog is to help myself keep learning language even though I am graduating this semester and will most likely get a job that has nothing to do with my East Asian Languages and Culture.


 In this blog I will be trying to maintain my language abilities in the following languages

• Japanese; would like to raise myself to a confident speaker and just know at least 1500 kanji.
• Chinese; just brush up on what I've forgotten and see if I can go further that that.
• Hindi; get away from my poetic sentences and be able to maintain actual conversations
• Korean; learn the poor language

So I will be having little section updating the progress of each of these languages and also what daily life would like the throw in between.