Learning Japanese – Week 1: My first words
This week has been busy but I've stayed consistent and practiced Japanese every day, even if not a lot.
I've been doing my flashcards on Anki, 10 new cards a day. I am only listening to the word's audio and trying to remember what it means. Here's an example of a card:
So with 10 words a day the reviews do add up quite quickly. Many words sound similar to me and I was getting them all mixed up. Some days I was getting too confused and didn't finish my reviews. I think it might have been better to create flashcards myself from words I find in the video I'm listening to, this way I would be sure to encounter them. But anyway I already recognized a few words when listening to the video so that was exciting!
To make reviewing cards less random, now I am forcing myself to find mnemonics for every new word. It does take some effort, sometimes I spend a minute or two trying to find a good memorable mnemonic (although most of them end up as stupid personal references). So far it seems very helpful, I'm starting to be able to distinguish words that sounded super similar.
I also did some listening with the video I found last week, but not much (maybe one hour in total).
On an unrelated note, I've read Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir this week and I loved it! I've read it in only three days, in fact I spent six hours on the plane reading it without even noticing the time pass, which left me shocked when I checked the time lol. I think this is my first sci-fi book, at least as far as I can remember. In the past I've mostly read fantasy and some psychology books. I'm definitely reading The Martian next.