#july progress

Sabuki Yesterday’s Grammar Guide (I like their summary at the start tbh because they suggest just reading through to get an overview which is my preferred way of reading grammar, also I notice some of the grammar topics are exactly what I’ve been seeing in manga/clozemaster/video games/shows lately that I keep just having to guess what it means): https://sakubi.neocities.org/ 

DJT Guide (not super in depth, but suggests a good plan for studying along with linking to what to use, suggesting specific tools to use, and having a list of immersion material): https://djtguide.neocities.org/guide.html

DJT Guide’s Table of Resources (includes many novels, manga, movies, learning materials - most notable to me is the novels since they have been hard for me to find): https://djtguide.neocities.org/cor.html#novels

Tae Kim’s Grammar Guide (an often used grammar guide): http://www.guidetojapanese.org/learn/grammar

Reddit - a dump of japanese game scripts (specifically final fantasy): https://www.reddit.com/r/LearnJapanese/comments/54haix/a_dump_of_jrpg_japanese_scripts/

DJT Guide also suggests using some method to learn kanji (RTK, KanjiDamage, Kodanshi Kanji Learners Guide, or learning kanji as part of vocab), learning vocabulary (using core 2k/6k, your own sentence mining etc, in my case Nukemarine’s memrise decks and Clozemaster). And to start reading after learning 1000-2000 words. Sabuki recommends starting to reading once you have reached the start of the ‘SECTION TWO: ABSOLUTE TERRITORY’ section. 

My version of this would be: kanji mostly learned through word learning now as I know a lot of ‘rough meanings’ now, vocabulary being studied in Nukemarine’s LLJ memrise decks and Clozemaster, and I’m going to either read this Sabuki grammar guide or finish Tae Kim’s (or both). 

Based on the vocab suggestion, I probably could start reading I’d just prefer to get more vocabulary first. I already knew around 1000+ words, now its closer to 2000 with 650 from Clozemaster recently and over 500 new words from Nukemarine’s memrise decks a few months back. Currently, I am sticking with video games mostly to read since they’re a bit easier (with all the context, or a script of something I know from its english translation), although manga’s also doable for reading at the moment. Reading is not really a priority yet for me I’m still improving the vocabulary and grammar bases.

I’ve read this suggestion by Nukemarine before, and I think its quite a good idea - especially for improving listening skills and reinforcing what you know into a more immediate-understanding. https://www.reddit.com/r/LearnJapanese/comments/886lfg/does_your_japanese_listening_ability_lag_behind/

The core idea is: a mix of ‘audio seeds’ (audio you’ve studied before and therefore understood before) and ‘other’ audio (ideally things you’ve watch/heard with english subs or directly in your target language before - so your mind ‘likes’ the material). He suggests 30% audio seeds and 70% other, though any combo may be useful and he’s not sure if another % split would be more effective.

The idea is your mind understood the ‘audio seeds’ before in study, so as you listen to it regularly without pause your mind practices understanding it quicker and without concentrating as much, then over time you hear words/phrases/sentences similar in the ‘other’ audio material and your brain latches on and starts trying to comprehend them too and practices. 

I’ve very roughly followed this article’s advice before, and it started helping. So I’d like to make a proper list of what I could use for a full on Audio Immersion Loop that meets all these needs:

Japanese:

Audio Seeds: - Core 2k Pimsleur (audio directly from Nukemarine’s LLJ decks and because of that it should be mostly things I’ve studied before, or you could study using the Nukemarine LLJ Memrise Courses): https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B8cWM0WNU3s4eFdSMzk5Vm9HR1E?resourcekey=0-KVCnBQh3SJxhn2oCUC-SiA - JapaneseAudiolessons.com (not ‘pure’ audio seeds idea since this includes english, but would count as comprehensible audio). Link for meL https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1qoJ7B002ZEgyDvCnGyFXUS1u8S_qgoG2 , General link for you: https://www.japaneseaudiolessons.com/ - Clozemaster Radio Mode for Japanese - Well suited for this, since you can have it play audio of sentences you already studied!

Other Audio: - Lets plays of any game you have familiarity with/like - for me that’d be Kingdom Hearts, Final Fantasy X, Ratchet and Clank, etc. Also any ‘video game movie’ since it goes directly through parts you know. - Condensed audio of FFX (perfectly suited for this): https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1M5jdUQCM7O12r1X8np5y4ofkzBKMSdJo - Condensed audio of Death Note: https://www.paliss.com/episode/death-note-1615919536511x465432008057248060 - anything from this site if you’ve seen the anime: https://www.paliss.com/ - general condensed audio files: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1EMBr5yskSiBTZ-LUQtMY-r4AihRIJczJ

What I’d do: listen to Clozemaster Radio Mode Japanese, and FFX condensed audio.

Chinese:

Audio Seeds: - Chinese Spoonfed Audio (not ‘pure’ audio seeds because there’s english, but when I played this in even just the background regularly I saw listening skill improvements): https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1MCKgOxzW9cd1u9cWjzGwWrpxnL5pDz0w - Clozemaster Radio Mode for Chinese - again, well suited for this, as you have the option to play only sentence audio you have already studied. 

Other Audio: - Guardian audiobook! by Avenuex: https://music.163.com/#/djradio?id=791802378&order=2&_hash=programlist&limit=100&offset=0 - Sherlock audiobook: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVyDH2ns1F757P-m8MHckuIFqWapl6y-1 - Guardian audiobook by wheat (I really like their voice): https://music.163.com/#/djradio?id=794964371 - Silent Reading audiobook (note this is the same version as ximayala so if you have that then just search ximalaya this version has some sentences/paragraphs skipped): http://www.6ting.cn/books/59641.html - Silent Reading audiobook unabridged (UPDATE I am listening through this one while following the webnovel and YES this version actually matches the text): part 1 - https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1b5411N7aa?share_source=copy_web part 2 - https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1SX4y1G7z7?share_source=copy_web part 3 - https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1tU4y1p74y part 4 - https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1cy4y1t7cC?share_source=copy_web - Silent reading (on music.123 by 景喵- , I tend to prefer this site because you can still listen to it in a mobile web browser with it minimized)  https://music.163.com/#/djradio?id=349361634&order=1&_hash=programlist&limit=100&offset=100  - Silent reading (on music.123 by  栗煜子)  https://music.163.com/#/djradio?id=792725710&order=1&_hash=programlist&limit=100&offset=100 - Guardian condensed audio (my link, will not work for others, u can ask for a copy if you’d like I just basically ran the episodes and subs through subsrs, mainly to make condensed audio): https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/11J2qADG9rHSK_45rKpvVIpzXn8YYWhA_ - Silent Reading audio drama: https://youtu.be/DsdmeQBMD_M - Word of Honor audio drama: https://m.missevan.com/sound/2853120 - LiuLi audiobook: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLH_aGSaKXFeHSofRd4LF1Hl8fpCSREVBW - HP audiobooks: https://music.163.com/#/djradio?id=526222636&order=2&_hash=programlist - general condensed audio link for chinese if anyone would like (it has The Untamed): https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1LtZEKe9ItVg-H5q-G01YITLyfrWpOZR-

What I’d do: listen to Chinese Spoonfed Audio or Clozemaster Radio mode Chinese (whatever I could get myself to), then other percentage split between any audiobooks I’d want to listen to Guardian/Silent Reading/Sherlock.

French:

Audio Seeds: - Francais Par Le Methode Nature (literally made to be comprehensible, even if its brand new then Still just like chinese spoonfed audio files, it should be fine to just play repeatedly until you pick stuff up): https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLf8XN5kNFkhdIS7NMcdUdxibD1UyzNFTP - Gigafrench audio files (specifically if you have studied the related lessons already): http://gigafrench.com/construction/ - Clozemaster Radio Mode for French (however I’m not a big fan of my phone’s french voice)

Other Audio: - Dracula in french: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0hdBpzGpYY - Frankenstein in french: https://youtu.be/8AP02iALr5A - Carmilla in french: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLpOWTYUar6NK8Qn7niKNw7Vp0z5YE5t7Z - Buffy francias: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x42mdjh - Merlin francais: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2crj9t

What I’d do: listen to Francais Par Le Methode Nature on repeat, spend other portion of time going through Dracula audiobook tbh (unless anyone knows an audiobook I’d enjoy more that’s easy to find). 

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As for me specifically, realistically what I plan to do for a while:

Listen to Clozemaster radio mode Japanese and Chinese more often in down time (make the most out of the fact I have the radio mode option lol)

Listen to more chinese audiobooks, in the background, any time there’s nothing playing otherwise. (Since I really could LISTEN more often, its super easy to do during work I just don’t do it).

Actual other materials in japanese and french I probably won’t get to for a while. But if and when I do, above is a good plan for ways to include more listening practice.

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Overall, my main July (to maybe mid-August) study plan right now:

Listening to chinese audiobooks (so more listening in general)

Listening-Reading Method Guardian or Silent Reading (or honestly anything), just doing it when I feel like it or can. (so more listening and reading in general, along with getting through more of Guardian). This activity eats up the most study time.

Reading more chinese chapters (so more reading in general, I want to up the amount I’ve read)

Trying to use Clozemaster (Listening Mode and/or Radio mode) for Japanese more. (and chinese optionally, if I want) So more basic vocab/grammar for japanese. *italic is lower priority

Lower priority, but I’m also doing these:

Reading through japanese grammar guides (specifically finishing reading Sabuki https://sakubi.neocities.org/, and my Japanese in 30 Hours book). So enough of a grammar base to read more. This should take like 4 hours max to finish if I just sit down and do it. 

Small amounts of japanese immersion (mainly reading) - right now its been playing KH2 in japanese, and reading Guardian’s japanese translation.

Changed my mind yet again, recommending Idiom app wholeheartedly: https://getidiom.com/

Free, on android and iphone

can access pretty much anything online and get:

click definitions, from multiple sources, translation individual words, and of idioms and longer chunk-phrases/sentences, all with audio. also their translations are much better now for japanese and chinese

audio - can play the entire text, just one sentence, just a word, can loop audio (you can re-listen to your hearts content without having to select a section yourself and press constantly!) Also not sure if this is true in all cases, but the automatic-voice seems to do well at telling when 地 is pronounced di or de (I love pleco but in this small case it nearly always pronounces 地 as di even though its usually used attached to a word as ‘de’).

Article 1: Listen and Read Method - https://www.linguajunkie.com/featured/listen-and-read-method

Here’s the process.

Listen to an audio lesson that you DON’T yet understand.

Read along to get the meaning.

Listen to the language again.

Now you will understand it. SIMPLE.

Repeat what you hear to practice your speaking.

Once you hear the phrases, your ear becomes trained for it.

However, you don’t yet understand it because your brain has no prior information to relate it to.

Once you know its meaning, you associate the sound to its meaning.

And when you hear the phrases again, you’ll know what it is.

Your brain now relates most recent information – the meaning you just learned.

Hearing the unknown trains your ear.

Reading along gives you the meaning & makes an instant connection with it’s English translation

Next time you hear it, you will understand it.

Repeat what you hear to practice your speaking.

My summary:

You listen to audio you do not yet understand (Clozemaster listen mode/radio mode are structured this way, so is Chinese Spoonfed Anki audio).

You read along to comprehend the meaning (or I would assume you hear the english translation would work)

Listen to the audio again

Shadow if you’d like to practice speaking.

So basically, it is extremely similar to WasabiJapanese, and to the audio-flashcard type files I like.

Article 2: Language Learning with Bilingual Books (aka Listening Reading Method) - https://forum-sprachen-lernen.com/en/language-learning-with-bilingual-books/

First, read the translation to familiarize yourself with the content of the text. Depending on previous knowledge, this can be one page or maybe even several pages.

Next, listen to the book version and read it in the second language at the same time. Try to understand every word and read at the same time. If you can understand everything and read along easily, you can move on to point

Listening without reading. Maybe even close your eyes. Can you still understand everything? If so, then you can move on to point 4. If not, briefly stop at the places you do not yet understand and look up the unfamiliar word.

Now that you understand the text blindly, you can switch to passive listening. Take the audiobook and listen to it again and again. Set your MP3 player to “repeat indefinitely”. It won’t hurt to listen to the whole story over and over again. Then you have already prepared yourself for the next sections and will be faster at points 1 to 3. You will notice that you will soon know many sentences of the text by heart.

My Notes: This is extremely similar to the forum on L-R Method. Differences: in this one the initial ‘get context by reading translation’ (step 1 in L-R)  is important, you skip the target-language audio/translation text step (step 3 in L-R), you repeat the target-language audio/text step as needed (which is step 2 in L-R Method and also suggested to be repeated but not mandatory), you listen without reading and Glance at the target-language text/translation as needed to look up any unknown words and keep doing this until you understand all of the audio without looking (so L-R Method’s listen-only stage is longer). 

Thoughts:

What I find interesting is both of these articles had some core ideas in common with study methods i’m currently using. Notably:

1. Play audio in TARGET LANGUAGE, then see (or hear) a translation, then target language again. Which is how Clozemaster works and Chinese Spoonfed Anki - that may be part of why they’re effective (I think Glossika, JapaneseAudioLessons.com also work that way). The key thing being - practice hearing before knowing the translation a little bit, then see the meaning after, then practice listening again.

2. For the bilingual texts article, this article seems to boil down to - get prior context, then listen-read in target language (looking up words as needed), then listen-only (looking up words as needed until no text is needed). 

I think if we apply point 1, it makes more sense now why the original L-R Method form suggests Step 2 (target language audio and text) before step 3 (english text/target language audio). Step 2 in this case would be to prime your ears for listening, then step 3 would give you understanding, then step 4 (listening without any text) would give you practice understanding without translation. 

I started translating the simplified print version of Guardian that has additional scenes! I am not sharing it yet, but may in the future at some point. (Notes for future reference: taking a picture in good light with the page flat, depending on if needed upping contrast so its darker/lighter in photos, then opening in OCR in Pleco works pretty well at converting the text to digital so I can make notes and edit and look up words more easily. Also so far 1 page takes 1 hour to translate roughly so keep that in mind ToT).

I am yet again tempted to to a full on Listening Reading Method ‘test run.’ By that I mean: picking a novel, (step 1) reading in english, (step 2) reading in chinese with chinese audio (repeating as needed), (step 3) reading in english with chinese audio (repeating as needed), (step 4) listening to audio only. Yes I’m still debating if I’d do step 3, then step 2 - since I tend to flip which I do first depending on the day. Also debating if I ‘prep’ first by listening only (I could call it step 0). Also still debating if I’d do instead: step 0 listen only, step 1, step 2, step 3, ~step 2 again~, step 4 listen only. Basically I did tiny tests with The Little Prince, and I’ve done 20 chapters of Guardian so far (which did help) but Guardian is so long I end up varying how I do it each day into whatever way gets me TO do it and Guardian is so long it will be months until I know what ‘completing a book’ is like for the process. The original forum creator of L-R Method would do like 3-6 hour books or like 10 hour books. Guardian is... much longer. Also, if I pick a book both harder than The Little Prince (so there’s more vocab to learn) and easier than Guardian (so I can get to a natural listening stage faster) I wonder how much progress I’d make. Right now books I am considering for a ‘test method’ run are: Harry Potter 1 (simply because someone made parallel text with audiobook videos already so it is super convenient to do L-R Method, also the book has  2600 unique characters and 7700 unique words so I would likely reinforce my hanzi knowledge and learn maybe a couple hundred more, and likely increase my vocabulary by several hundred to a couple thousand depending on how much I focus, I’m fairly sure I can blow through it quickly the only limiting factor is like The Little Prince I am not sure if the reading level is low enough that I may not pick up significant amounts of new words compared to how many I pick up from Guardian - https://youtu.be/NLu0JW6VtGM). Sherlock Holmes - The Hound of Baskervilles (the book is 7.5 hours so not nearly as long as Guardian, I could probably L-R Method it in 2 weeks, the novel is written for adults and a mystery genre so genre-words I may find more useful to me while also probably having a bigger vocabulary than The Little Prince,  P74 巴斯克维尔的猎犬 01 audiobook - https://youtu.be/hDKfUjienKA, full playlist of the sherlock audiobooks - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1QFMgv0n_Y&list=PLVyDH2ns1F757P-m8MHckuIFqWapl6y-1, and bilinguis.com has a parallel text which I am checking if it matches the audiobook - http://bilinguis.com/book/baskerville/zh/en/c1/). Bonus, just one day I’d love to test it with Alice in Wonderland in French since bilinguis.com has an audiobook and parallel text - http://bilinguis.com/book/alice/fr/en/c3/. Or Le Francais Par Le Methode Nature, since that also now has audio and text and one day I’d like to finish reading it - https://youtu.be/0uS5WSeH8iM.

Fun fact: I am listening to P74 巴斯克维尔的猎犬 01 (by  知识改变命运 ) in the background right now and the first thing I hear is “qinai watson” my dear watson ok. ok sherlock i see you. ToT. Aside from that I just keep hearing random words I know. If you plan to listen to a chinese sherlock audiobook though - I do recommend this playlist. I’ve found a few sherlock audiobooks and for some the audio is very rough like it was recorded from the radio, whereas this one is fairly clear and the reader speaks very clearly, and has a rhythm to sentences (which for me personally helps me listen easier and parse out words). So if you know some words they are much easier to hear, and if you are looking at the parallel text I linked on bilinguis it is quite easy to follow along. 

I really want to get into the habit of some extensive reading with audiobooks (as in reading while listening) just because it speeds up my reading, and I pick up some words in reading while practicing listening. Its also somewhat doable, whereas just listening I may often get lost unless I know the material well. Last night I read chapter 1 of MoDu while playing the audiobook and following along - obviously I did not read as in depth as if I’d have done L-R Method and looked up all unknown words with pop-up english. But combined listening comprehension and reading comprehension I understood ENOUGH to follow the plot and keep reading, at a faster pace than if I only was extensively reading and at a much better comprehension than if I only listen. (My listening comprehension is a bit better if I’ve read the text beforehand, but that’s sort of artificial since i prepped by reading the text beforehand). Yes, I learn new hanzi better with slower extended reading where I have time to really slow down and look at the new hanzi a lot. But I’d like to aim for quantity of materials read for a while? I’d if simply reading more will help, but a lot of the general advice seems to be the more extensive reading you do where you can follow the main points the more you will improve. And hey, maybe that applies to simply ‘listening a lot more’ too?

A lot of articles I’ve found recently emphasize repeated listening, and I want to try to include that more in how I study. While I might not do it as intensively as some articles suggest, I can definitely continue to do it in Clozemaster and continue playing audiobooks of chapters I’ve read already (so I can follow the audio ok) in my downtime. A LOT of my chinese study lately has not been active, its been mostly just ‘playing audio in the background.’ So since I’m not studying actively much, I might as well try to get in more listening.

I checked out the cdrama Forward Forever recently and opinions: if you understand basic chinese JUST watch it in chinese because wow are the english subs a hot mess ToT. I tried watching with subs and there were so many clear ‘wrong’ portions I just had to turn them off, they were made from google translate though so I’m not super surprised (but Xin Xiao Shi Yi Lang has much more decent auto-generated subs so ToT). I’m not sure if I’ll watch more or not, but I can definitely tell it was adapted from a BL source material with the way the main two guys are immediately set up as characters and then meet. I also want to check out Secret of the Three Kingdoms but I’ve seen like 3 minutes and I already am pretty aware I’ll probably like the show so much that I’ll want to put the english subs on for clarity. Secret of the Three Kingdoms feels Very well made.

Learn Language Through Reading: https://linguapath.com/learn-language-through-reading/

Love this article. It includes info from Paul Nation’s research.

I refer to Paul Nation’s 2014 corpus-based study, in which he calculated the amount of input necessary to learn the most frequent 9000 words.1 Here are his findings:

Let’s imagine that you already know the first 2000 most frequent words. In this case, you would have to read just about 300 000 words (or 3 books) to pick up another thousand words at the 3000-level.2

For a rough estimate: 120,000 words is roughly 240 pages in english. this will equal one “token” from the table above.

For comparison (see this article https://chinese.stackexchange.com/questions/1685/for-magazines-or-books-how-much-does-text-volume-differ-when-comparing-chines) “An average result will be that 1,000 Chinese characters can be translated into about 600-700 English words, or 1,000 English words can be translated into about 1,500-1,700 Chinese characters, varying depending on the natures of the source contents and target writing styles. “ (this is what they referenced https://www.actranslation.com/chinese/chinese-wordcount.htm).

So 120,000(.7)=84,000 chinese words per ‘token.’ 

Or “or each 1000 English words will be translated into about 1500-1700 Chinese characters“ (https://www.actranslation.com/chinese/chinese-wordcount.htm).  So 120,000 english words, will mean 120,000*1.6= 192,000 chinese characters per ‘token.’

So, if I know the word count or character count of a novel, I can estimate how many novels/characters it will take to get to X level. 

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(I’ve read 69, 315 characters of guardian so far, that’s the length of first arc)

163,913 characters as of sundial arc.

53 chapters of guardian is ~191,000 characters.

54 chapters of guardian is ~195,000 characters. One chapter on average about ~3600 characters.

So since guardian is about twice that amount of chapters (106 plus extras), the whole novel would be ‘2 tokens’ and count as that much.

So I would estimate, at least in priest’s novel length, every 53-54 or so would count as 1 token on the table above.

For future reference, that’s about 20-21 pages per chapter in Pleco for on average ~3600 characters.

I’d guess a 10 page chapter in pleco to be half that number of characters, 1800 characters. So for those ‘shorter’ chaptered novels, I would need 106 chapters to reach ‘1 token.’ (192,000/1800).

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Out of curiosity, I’ve read 66 chapters of hanshe at 10 pleco pages each, 66*1800= 118,800 characters. 

Plus how much I’ve read of Guardian, 69,315+118,800= 188,115

Plus Xiao Wangzi, and the chapters of Tamendegushi I’ve read,  14,718 （小王子）19*1800=34,200（他们的故事)

188115+14718+34200= 237,033 is at least how many chinese characters I’ve read so far (I’ve also read a few chapters of various things but didn’t count them well).

237,033/192,000= ~1.23 ‘tokens.’ 

And, if I want to go easy on myself? I literally re-read the sundial arc a second and third time ToT (because I really love Guardian).

So I may well be at: Read sundial arc twice: 188115+14718+34200+69315= 306,348 or 1.59 tokens. Read sundial arc three times: 188115+14718+34200+(69315*2)=375,663 or 1.96 tokens.

***So I might be in the ‘learning the 3000 most common words’ section that is going to take 576,000 more characters to get through. which is 160 more priest-novel 20-pleco-page chapters, or 320 more 10-pleco-page chapters. 

Qi Ye ~79 chapters (~284,400 characters, 1.48 tokens) , Tian Ya Ke ~81 chapters (~291,600 characters, 1.51 tokens), Mo Du ~185 chapters (~ 666,000 characters, 3.46 tokens).

So: Qi Ye + Tian Ya Ke = finishing 3000-level (or just Reading Mo Du on its own).

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From the article, it summarizes that to learn all 9000 common words in a language from reading: This equals to something like 92 books. With the reading speed of 200 words per minutes (which is comfortable enough: I tend to read English at 295 wpm, and English is far from being my native language), it would take you 150 minutes a day (2.5 hours) to process all this beauty in a year.

So I am guessing, if I read 150-200 (unfortunately - but I read a lot of much shorter books when I push into extensive reading), at 30 min to 1.5 hours a day on average, I may get to that point in idk 3 years? 

Also from the article:

Any activity you do in your target language will contribute to that cherished number of 11 million tokens you need to upload to your brain. You may listen to podcasts, watch movies and YouTube, talk to strangers, read magazines, play games… When it comes to vocabulary acquisition, anything goes, seriously.

Diversify your input, and you won’t ever feel bored. But keep in mind that spoken input is often way slower than written. Read a book for two hours and you will process approximately 24 000 words. Spend the same two hours watching a movie and you will get just about 10 000 words3With a typical speech rate for movies of 83 words per minute.4.

So an hour of reading (at speaking speed) is ~12,000 words, 30 minutes is 6,000 words, 15 minutes is 3,000 words (that tracks as Guardian chapters take me 15-20 minutes to read being 3000-4000 characters and I read at around speaking speed).

A movie per hour is 5,000 words. A drama is 40 min, 1/3 of a 120 minute movie, so idk probably on average ~3,333 words per drama episode (watched in target language obviously). 

I’m not counting how much time I spend on those, because who knows, and I obviously spent lots of time listening to the Guardian audiobook (though Idk if this person’s article thinks ‘repeated reading/listening of a single material’ counts as multiple things or not). 

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The article suggests:  Instead, aim to cover, say, 1000-5000 levels in the first year, 6000-7000 in the next, and gradually work your way through 8000-9000 levels during the following 18 months. This way, you’ll consistently read 20-30 foreign language books a year, which is more than manageable. 

(that’s 15 chinese books in first year, or 2,880,000 characters... I feel like I’ve heard of a book easily that long in chinese... anyway, that would be 15 ‘chunks’ of 54 chapters 20-pleco-pages, or 15 ‘chunks’ of 106 chapters 10-pleco-pages... which for chinese novels typical lengths of ~100 chapters that would mean more like ~7.5 actual novels read total and possibly less if the novels are significantly longer).

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Another interesting article: https://puroh.it/reading-for-a-fine-vocabulary/

Did a lot of these calculations for me (too bad I didn’t read it first).

They said at about 11.6 million words you will have learned a 35,000 english vocabulary. So 11,600,000*1.6 (the english words to chinese characters scale) = 18,560,000 chinese characters. 18.5 million characters. 

That is ~96 ‘chunks’ of 54 chapters of 20-pleco pages, (or 5155 chapters to reach all 18.5 million words). Because chinese web novels are often 100+ chapters, it would be around ~48 novels at 100-ish chapters each. 

So to get back on track: this article estimates 11.6 million english words to be 137 novels. For chinese, the equivalent would be 18.5 million characters is either ~96 chunks (54 long-chapters) or ~48 novels (100-ish chapter novels). 

48/137= 0.35 so you need to read only .35 the amount of ‘novels’ you’d need to read in english to reach the same level.

In this article, it says 100 books in english would get you to 25,000 words learned. So that would be 100*.35 = 35 (100 chapter) novels read in chinese to get to the same level maybe? And 80 books in english to get to 20,000 words learned, which is 28 (100 chapter) novels read in chinese.

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I would guess, based on the two articles combined, yeah 28-35 novels read would probably get you to a comfortable reading level, possibly les novels than that.

Things I want to read: hanshe, guardian, modu, sha po lang, can ci pin, poyun, liuli, qi ye, tian ya ke, xin xiao shi yi lang, dao mu bi ji 1-9, dmbj ten years, peach blossom debt, san ye.... that’s 22 novels by name (likely more if i were to count in 100-chapter segments), plus some other novels and fanfic... i think if i just keep following my plan of reading books i want to read i will eventually hit those benchmarks. 

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My Japanese is like the last post more or less. I tried watching Sailor Moon in Japanese. Since I wanted to try more stuff in only Japanese, no English to help me out. I could follow the overall main idea, some real simple slice of life lines, and sailor moon is thankfully so visual in its storytelling its really easy to follow even if you barely know the words. I've been watching Ranma 1/2 in only Japanese too, but Ranma I already know the plot and characters. I'd say my Japanese level is like... almost where my chinese was 8 months into studying? Ahich for me was like: can start following the Overall Main Idea of shows without subs but most details are a massive struggle unless I look up stuff (but ill pick it up eventually probably), can follow manga without looking stuff up but again it's mainly overall main idea only and details are hard (but i can get some details with word lookup), can start baby step wading into reading actual novels but aside from a line here and there and maybe a vague overall idea of some paragraph main ideas I really need a dictionary lookup to figure out the overall main idea For Sure (and even with word lookup the details are still a struggle).

Audio is perhaps the odd one out... I have been listening to Final Fantasy X in Japanese, and since I have prior context from playing in English and knowing the plot/characters, nearly constantly I know what lines I'm listening to even when I don't know the words and I'm not getting visuals (only listening to audio). I'm honestly surprised I follow the audio of ffx as well as I do. I think particularly for me Listening Reading Method with Japanese text and audio would probably help me a TON... but i don't have the focus or time. If I do ever try an L R Experiment with Japanese I'll let you know. With playing Ryu ga Gotoku Ishin, I also found myself mainly relying on audio when I heard it (over Japanese subs) just because I can listen easier than I can read fast when it comes to Japanese. My audio listening skills are more like where chinese was after 1.5-2 years. So I would say my decision to focus on listening in study a lot with Japanese was a good decision for listening skills.

I am definitely mostly doing a hands off approach with Japanese study these past few months and for the near future - listening to glossika Japanese is the only "structured" study I'm doing and to be honest I consider it comprehensible input repeated exposure rather than the more intensive kind of study grinding. All my other "study" is just: play a game in Japanese, watch something in Japanese, listening to something in Japanese. I've been occasionally reading in Japanese, and during that I do some word lookup which is about the most studying I'm doing (but it's really not much more than maybe 20 words I've looked up this past june).

I am very much trying the approach of "extensive exposure of somewhat comprehensible material (but like only main idea comprehended) and maybe your level will improve". Like the article on Reddit I mentioned of the person who watched 1000 hours of Japanese and got their listening from N5 to N2. I don't know if my results would be as drastic - especially given I'm not clocking 1000 hours for a long while lol - but I'm also a higher starting level than thar person. I could already play video games in japanese that I'd played in English before, I could already read manga for the main idea, so my initial Japanese before attempting to keep learning just by "exposure" was probably higher than that person's. Also, again... I just do not study often so I'm not going to get nearly that amount of hours.

Eventually? I'd like to do the following things with Japanese. Maybe I will get to come back and check off what I've done!

Play Kingdom Hearts 2 entirely in japanese

Play Final Fantasy 6 in Japanese (I own it now!!)

Play Nier Automata in Japanese

Play Yakuza Ishin in japanese

Play any of my old games in japanese (Mario world is probably gonna be easy but it'd still be a lil accomplisment!)

Finish one of the lets plays I'm watching in Japanese (there's a new channel I really like, but I'd also love to find an LP of Devil Summoner Raidou)

Finish Koisenu Futari novel in japanese

Finish reading Any manga volume in Japanese (it would be a cool little accomplishment! And I'm surprised I haven't fucking done this yet...)

Finish reading any novel in Japanese (gonna be funny as hell to me if it's Parasite Eve the first Japanese novel I bought, or Guardian japanese translation which I've already read 2 chapters of)

Do listening reading method Mejo Light Edition. Which would be listening to a Japanese audio drama episode of mdzs or the audio cd for Nier Replicant and just watch with eng subs then again with Japanese subs. Should be easy and only take 2 hours but I just cannot focus ToT

Do listening reading method with Alice in Wonderland (I've already done 1.5 chapters but then I can't focus)

Finish listening to Final Fantasy X condensed audio since apparently it's easy, and it's fun to hear the differences in what they say

Watch a show season in japanese

Whenever I can focus on textbooks, I have two books for learning to read Japanese. I really want to cram ans JUST READ THROUGH THEM. I feel like my reading skills would get SUCH a technical boost, my Kanji pronunciations would improve, and my grammar would get a nice refresher and reinforcing. I think it would push me up significantly in my reading level, and overall japanese level, if I'd just sit down and focus. (But knowing me I may not end up reading these textbooks until I've already read a whole japanese novel).

So yeah. We will see how my japanese does.

In other updates!!! Chinese!!

My reading level in chinese? Quite decent. I'm lazy. That's what it all amounts to. ToT I am officially at a perfectly fine reading level to start just CHUGGING through a lot of the physical novels I own and digital webnovel pages I have opened in my tabs. Chapters take me 20-30 min (4000 characters) which to be honest is probably roughly my English reading speed when I'm sinking in. So it's all just a matter of time at this point, making time to read. I have no more excuses to put off reading these novels except lack of time. I could definitely read Saye now, Guardian now, dmbj now. I honestly predict somehow I'm going to read my can ci pin chinese volumes before I actually read the translation. That's the state I'm in.

I've also been reading manhua, and again it's just TIME in my way. To be fair, time is also holding me back on reading all the novels I'm mid reading in English. Generally just readings been hard. Partly why Japanese gets so much focus lately is I CAN game right now and the yakuza games are having me listen to Japanese nonstop, remind me to listen to other Japanese stuff I've been going through. So yeah.

Chinese reading level? I'm really happy with it right now! It's not perfect but it reminds me of being maybe 9-10. I was an "advanced reader." It reminds me of being like 10 and picking up a huge James Michener novel or Stephen King novel - i could follow the plot fine and appreciate some nuance but definitely wasn't catching All nuance and some really cool literary stuff was going over my head and some details were foggy because I didn't have the vocabulary to grasp them clearly but had a good guess of the rough idea. That's where I'm at when I read stuff "at the level i aim for" which I guess is like 95% comprehension level as far as words per page I know. Guardian and dmbj are about that reading level.

That decent reading level ALSO means I'm probably at the point now where extensive exposure to audiobooks may reap improvements in listening and overall chinese. But I'm just... so lazy. And the instant loss of some comprehension versus my reading level is always a hit to enjoyablility. But I do think now or soon, more extensive listening should be done because I could make genuine improvement JUST doing that. I was watching Hikaru No Go cdrama no subs and I can follow it really well, so I am definitely using chinese subs as a crutch to a degree.

If my japanese level, which is maybe upper beginner or lower intermediate, is good enough to learn from doing extensively for the most part? Then my chinese DEFINITELY is and I'm just lazy when it comes to that challenge lol. Where japanese is more of a mental drain and challenge TO focus and try to learn new things through exposure, my chinese levels okay enough I'm pretty much guaranteed to always follow the main idea and half the details fine. So it's a lot less challenging to just figure out a few new details/words each time I do it. But again... that laziness lol

For chinese sometime soon I'd like to:

Finish reading my poyun manhua volume at home

Rewatch hikaru no go chinese drama adaptation no subs

READ GUARDIAN PLEASE TOT

finish the pingxie fic I'm 1/3 through rereading

Listen to and finish listening to one of the dang audiobooks I'm listening to

Finish reading any of my manhua volumes at home

Read the new dmbj village novel when I get it in mail

i am almost done with that pingxie fanfic and i am realizing a lot of verbs and adjectives i don’t know, if i bother to stop and guess based on the 1 hanzi i do know in the word (or both if i know both hanzi spelling it) then i can guess pretty much what the word means. usually with only the nuance missing (like ‘abrupt’ versus ‘sudden’). and even with english, how i learned the difference between words like that was just seeing them in context used just slightly differently ToT.