SO far I am at around 110 books? I know it’s more because i don’t register every book on dokusho meter because i don’t want to be associated with shitty books. and i’m excited to reach 200 and i certainly have a long list of shit i want to read so there’s no problem in that department. it’s just a matter of time. if 2015 and half of 2015 wasn’t so shitty i might’ve already reached 200 books and i am not exaggerating. it’s incredible what a difference changing jobs can make. BUT 2017 should be better for that reason alone.
I do not mean textbooks. and btw I don’t think Korean books can be bought on the cheap unless you go to book off in Korea, right? I have no interest in reading books in Korean anyway so it works out great for me but curious if you’re shit of luck if your target language is Korean.
I think tae Kim and RIKAI-CHAN and google is PLENTY. I never bought a Japanese grammar book and I KNOW my Japanese grammar. it is not necessary and I’m glad I never bothered! FREE FOR THE WIN. I mean books to enjoy reading whether it’s books with furigana ( I only have one book with furigana over all the kanji and that was because that was the only way that particular book was printed because the publisher wanted everyone to be able to read the story), light novel ( love slayers… not interested in loli moe gag shit that are plaguing and ruining anime nowadays), hard covers, bunko, manga, etc….
ANYWAYS 2 ways to buy books are in person and online. the option for in person is book off if you’re in south Korea or japan or NY or California… go to the site to find out more locations. There’s kurokuniya but it’s so expensive and you can find books people sold from kurokuniya (whatev it is called) kinokuni? to book-off. I went to kinikuniya and gasped and left lol. It’s only good for window shopping. for online there’s cdjapan and honto.jp?? and buying services but… I don’t want to pay for EMS shipping
here’s the list
CDJAPAN.NET
mercari – if you reside in the US. / EBAY
PHYSICAL BOOK STORES LIKE BOOK-OFF, KUROKUNIYA
HONTO.JP (EMS ONLY – EXPENSIVE)
AMAZON.CO.JP (only if the seller sends internationally. you find out by putting the stuff in your cart and checking it out but delivery is relatively fast… like a few days! )
TENSO (FORWARDING SERVICE which opens you up to all Japanese websites ie amazon)
cdjapan.net and my rationalization!
so I love book off in NYC because of the prices like the 1 dollar section. there have been books where they’ll be in both the 1 dollar section and the regular price section which ranges from 3-5 dollars or even more if it’s hard cover or immaculate condition (but honestly everything in the stores seems to be good condition for the most part) and so in that case I go for the 1 dollar one because there is no discernible difference between the 2 in quality. sometimes the 1 dollars are books are a little more busted or yellowed but usually they’re in good quality. BUT it’s far for me now like 2 hours so if take in the time it takes to travel there and the cost it costs to go there and the selection (it’s limited in that whatever’s there is there.) and blahblah cdjapan.net price isn’t that bad. CDjapan sells new books so they’re going to range from 4-6 dollars unless it’s new or hardcover etc. (then it can go up higher) and gives you options for the shipping so I go for the cheapest because there’s no rush!!! I don’t understand people’s obsession with expedited EMS shipping and all that. Like with any overseas transactions you gotta experiment and see what weight will give you the most bang for your buck with the shipping. What I love about CDJAPAN is that I can buy books that I can’t buy at bookoff there and they’re all new…. so I try my best to not buy anything I can buy at book off…. like popular stuff. Like I said in the beginning considering the circumstances the price that I pay at cdjapan isn’t that bad but you know in case I ever go to nyc I don’t want to buy something for 7 dollars if I can get it for 1 dollar or 3 dollars etc… like I said I’m not impatient. I can wait a year or years. Unfortunately cdjapn can only sell books that are print ( but even if it’s in print sometimes they don’t carry it… there’s one book I WANTD TO READ AND IT WAS SO WORTH IT but it was not on cdjapan and it is definitely not out of print because it’s not that old.. they can’t possibly carry every fikin’ book. btw that books is ZOO 2 by otsuchi … IHIGHLLY RECOMMEND zoo 1 btw. btw I found it book off 😃 curiosity satisfied but I think I liked zoo 1 more) … so I can’t buy any ZEPPAN books 😦 it’s not like I’m obsessed with obscure books. it so happens some books that I want to read are not in print anymore. I am keeping a list of those books in evernote and dokusoh meter and whatnot and hopefully once that list is long enough and I carefully assess if they’re worth reading or not based off amazing reviews etc. I may look into a buying service in japan so I can buy used versions of them. book-off is a hit or miss because you can find some treasures and other times I know what I want to buy and they don’t have it which can’t be helped because it’s a used book store. what I want is a Japanese library because I don’t like buying shit. for English I try to borrow everything from the library.
here’s the other rationalization. I don’t spend money on stuff I don’t need to. I realize a lot of the times there’s an option to not buy something. you don’t need to buy coffee from Starbucks or decorations or candles or febreeze ( candles and febreeze are bad for your health) or soda or perfume (why do people pay money to SMELL LIKE SHIT) or cigarettes. one of the things I thought of as a little girl was that I never want to become that 40/50 year old woman who douses herself in perfume everyday and upset everyone with her presence or in other words emit effluvium. I think overapplying perfume is one of the most embarrassing things ever. I am anti-perfume so I wish people do not use it or make it etc. It is toxic.) or fast food or snacks (I actually prefer to starve or fast depending on how you want to construe it since it takes many days to starve to death – thank you books about north Korea- if it’s not necessary for me to buy and eat crap. according to a very INTERESTING book about notrh Korea they knew from experience how many days if takes women and men to die from starvation and it takes longer for women. it’s so scary and CREEPY that they have this knowledge from the wealth of anecdotal experience… why do that to your OWN PEOPLE over the dumbest shit). there are some shit they sell in cvs’s etc. that I do not understand why they bother producing it and why people bother buying it… stuff like frivolous Christmas decorations and whatnot especially plastic crap that’s bad for your health. and it’s always the people who make minimum wage + too many children who spend on that stuff… WHY??? (well they’re not very smart so it’s not surprising. but seriously if you’re a teen mom what do you want your daughter to become a teen mom? of course not. I think if my mom was a teen mom I would think she’s a dumb shit and hope I’m smarter than her and I only say harsh things like this because i’ve met impudent teen parents) but anyways I think a lot of the stuff that are sold and bought are so unnecessary and impart negative consequences on the environment and people around you etc. anyways it is one of my rationalization as to why I think it’s not so bad that I’m spending on money on Japanese books… I can’t borrow japanes books because I live in the usa and my only option it to buy and I go the cheapest route by choosing the slowest shipping and i’ve used my cdjapan points to save money and… reading is GOOD for your mind. It makes sense spending money on this vs other shit.
In case this puts someone’s mind at ease I am happy to report that my “haul” from cdjapan went swimmingly and all my crap was in mint condition as it should since they’re all new 😀 I think it averaged out to 6 or 7 dollars per book including the cost of shipping. I cant make myself spend 11 dollars on a book. it’s too much!! i’ll wait the few years lol (usually works for popular books… when I go to book-off). I am happy to report that cdjapan is worth it and I don’t feel like I’m spending a fortune on books. they’re new and it’s convenient because they’re sent to my door and I get to choose the shipping method and I get points for my birthday blahblahlh.
AMAZON.CO.JP
OMG I cannot believe I never looked into this. the shipping is only 10 dollars!!! well for whatever I ordered it was 10 dollars so it was totally worth it. I always assumed that the shipping cost would be obscene so I never looked into amazon.co.jp since I live in the USA. This is a route that is absolutely worth taking if you are buying a large set of books like the whole set of a manga series or a book series, etc. Otherwise you’re spending 10 dollars shipping per book. BTW not all sellers sell internationally. for the books I wanted to order only one seller would ship it to the USA so I am lucky :D. The downside to amazon.co.jp is that it’s only worth buying bulk so it’s not a good idea to order bulk of something you have NEVER read with the assumption that you’ll like it regardless of all the 5 star reviews on some site. sometimes the reason reading isn’t enjoyable in Japanese is because the book sucks rather than your shitty Japanese abilities. saying. There are some amazing books I’m compatible with that makes reading the Japanese language so PLEASANT AND FUN AND EFORTLESS AND THERE ARE SOME awful authors that are so frivolous and awful and it doesn’t take THAT many pages to figure that out. Now I haven’t read the full series so I cannot completely say my purchase was worth the money but I had read a few volumes so based on that it’s likely I’ll like the rest. EDIT: I ‘m almost done reading it was worth it.
ANOTHER option is TENSO which is a forwarding service. what you’d do is order books from online and have it sent to an address in japan then have them send them to you. I think I want to try it one day once I have a long enough list because I believe only EMS is available and that is HELLA expensive. there are some books I am dying to read that aren’t available through the other channels.
Lastly I need to include some deodorizing tips for old books whether they’re from Book-off or amazon or whatever other reason. I’ve researched my fairshare oN THE INTERNET. here’s the info without the BS
MERCARI/ EBAY
2 options if you live in america. on mercari search any of the following to find the listings: 小説 japanese book 日本語 にほんご 本 文庫 単行本 漫画 マンガ
you could also search the author or book title in japanese but it’s like a shot in the dark…. unless it’s popular. if the shipping is too expensive ask the seller to use usps media mail for the shipping option. you can also use the site to sell books you finished reading! very easy to do if you read konmari’s book. mercari stuff usually comes people’s houses so i recommend asking the seller if it’s a smoke pet free home. even if the house is smoke/pet free the books will probably smell so if you’re like me it’ll be months until you read them but it’s quite all right since i have huge piles of physical books and ebooks that are waiting to be read.
i recommend bundling and sending an offer on the app provided the shipping option is set correctly on the listing. you send the offer by putting in all the books you want from the one seller in your cart then sending them the offer. you can send them any offer ! i recommend lowballing as much as possible like 5 books for 10 dollars or 5 dollars. at the end of the day people just want to get rid of their shit and japanese books in japanese are not in high demand on an american app.
if the bundle option does not work or the shipping price increases really high message the seller directly to negotiate.
EBAY – to price check the mercari listing. you could also price check with amazon.co.jp. useful for stuff that comes in a series like manga.
DE-ODORIZING TIPS
BAKING SODA – get a big plastic tub, pour baking soda in it, put in some kind of mesh or grid like thing in the plastic tub so you can put the books in the tub without them touching the baking soda but still get exposed to the baking soda via the air. I’d say give it a few days or a weeeek or a month or two. REPEAT as needed.. do not throw away the baking soda. save it to clean stuff like your bathtub or to stain treat your white shirts with the nasty, unsightly yellow stains. mix HYDROGEN peroxide and dish soap to get a super useful paste to clean ANYTHING.
also there’s kitty litter and activated carbon. be careful with activated carbon. i put them on coffee filters and sometimes i tie it up and sometimes i don’t. i use all 3 lol.
NEWSPAPER- put newspapers between the pages. It’s not necessary to do every page (maybe if the book is THAT bad). I’d say every 10-20 pages. give it a few days, a week. REPEAT as needed.
FREEZER + NEWSPAPER – place book in a ziplock bag then put it in the freezer. I say employ the newspaper method on top of it for good measure in case there’s moisture so that the book is not subjected to the full brunt of the it.. Leave in for 3 days. the freezer has to do with mold I think…
NEWSPAPER – by it self.
AIR IT OUT – I’d say you’d have to it leave it for many hours to notice a difference. Of course the book has to be open with the pages exposed to the air/wind to make a difference. It’s tricky because you want air/wind but you don’t want the sun on the book. don’t forget about uva rays. they are omnipresent. so I don’t recommend leaving them out for more than a few hours in shade.
SUN – sun is good and bad… you gotta think of the pros vs cons with the sun depending on the condition of your book. Sun kills germs and helps rid any excess moisture in the book which may make a difference. if you leave your book in direct sunlight for too long you’ll damage the book. the pages will turn darker and if you leave it in the sun long enough it will smell like the sun (which smells awful in my opinion). I think it’s unnecessary unless your book has serious smells/issues. I read somewhere it takes 6 minutes for the sun to kill whatever germs it is capable of killing.
VACCUM – sometimes the smell is dust rather than the book being old. i vacuum the books carefully with the appropriate attachment. sometimes the book is old so it will smell even if you vacuum it. vacuum has 2 u’s
TIME – I’ve been shocked how i’ve gotten stinky books to smell like nothing from using the above methods which ultimately take time.
there are way too many fun books to read. do not waste time hauling textbooks. the fact that you’re hauling textbooks is very telling that you seem to be wasting money and you’ll NEVER BECOME FLUENT
so many of them in general- these are official youtube channels so they usually have subs in different languages … they are not those fan channels that will disappear any second. there’s so many competition/audition shows that aren’t on youtube that aired in korea
&howling – hype’s boy group for JAPAN – there are korean and japanese contestants- there’s a chinese guy too . I saw this show at 1.5 x or faster when they’re not singing/dancing and just thought wow all the good japanese singers are on this show and NOT on boys planet 999. kinda wish keita sang in the over ME group. the seconds of his vocals in the position audition were to die for.
a2k – JYP’s audition show for a group to promote in america?? damn this is such a treat for people who have seen JYP in kpop star, niziu season 1 etc etc. i hope the group succeeds in america.
BMSG – Japanese company – boy group – seems popular in japan based on the view count
superbee’s rap academy – hip hop
I think this is season 2? it’s called DROP THE BEAT – koreans always say drop the bit. drop the 장단 is slightly better
runext – hype girl group project ft sooyoung from SNSD -video not available to watch in japan for some reason
JTBC
YG GIRL GROUP – Omg they went so HAM with the skin smoothing filters. it’s okay to have pimples. YG is unrecognizable because he is smoothed to death lolz. kinda surprised he’s just back after getting outta jail… maybe it’s been years since then
TEASURE BOX – YG boy group. was also on v-live which is now something else. has korean subs
niziu – jyp Japanese girl group – he collaborated with Sony – aired in Hulu Japan. I had to use discord to watch it . I was kinda disappointed when he said utsukushiideshita but it’s the thought and intent behind the words that counts. Can’t help but be inspired by jyp squeezing in learning how to speak and understand Japanese in his tightly packed schedule. apparently there’s an edit from the original hulu version
also some 미리보기 on mnet which is a good chunk of the ep
the caveat is that you have subtitles with timing that match the video. The text of the subtitles does not need to match the dialogue.
Subtitle files that MATCH the french dub do not exist (maybe a couple shows on netflix?) but there’s a LOT OF transcripts for the french dubs of american shows on hypnoseries. Do note that sometimes they paste the french subtitles rather than the actual dub in the VF section so the only way to know if the VF is the transcript of the dub is to get the video/audio and open your ears. I thought of a way to generate subs2srs decks using a transcript
So what I need is the video with french dub audio, english subs that match the video or French subs that match the video in the timing but the text does not match the audio, notepad, potplayer, and subs2srs. I usually use the English subs since those are the ones with the best timing plus it helps with getting comprehensible input.
<- absolutely obsessed with this song for some reason. on loop for a day
To fenagle a subs2srs deck out of the transcript + vid + subtitles I used notepad, potplayer, aegisub, subs2srs subtitle edit, and websites. This method is not geared towards generating a deck that contains every single line from the episode. . this method is for mining lines. I love seeing how the number of lines I mine go down with each ep (well there might be ups and downs but the general trend is downward since french is easy for english-speakers). A less labor-intensive approach would be just mining the dub transcript text for anki cards sans audio/screenshot using vocabtracker.com or chrome plugin for vocabtracker or marking lines with + to mine then generating the audio using the azure plugin using the latest version of anki. Azure TTS is pretty kickass~ I usually set azure tts audio to the fastest speed I can handle.
general steps are
get the transcript 2. get subtitles + video 3. use potplayer +autohotkey to mine lines of interest 4. generate a subs2srs deck + condensed audio
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BREAKDOWN of the steps
1) After confirming the transcript matches the DUB and not a copy paste of the french subtitles I paste the transcript from hypnoseries into http://www.unit-conversion.info/texttools/add-line-breaks/#data to add line breaks before ( and after ) and also after . and sometimes ? and !
2) get subtitles from subscene and/or SOUS TITRE . you gotta get subs that match the video. it’s either gonna be from dvds or NETFLIX (ie grey’s anatomy). using Aegisub for editing one subtitle file and subtitleedit to batch process many subs: convert frame-rate 23.297 to 25 if necessary. I also shift the times if necessary ie i had to shift 1 second for some show. if the episode is like 40 minutes long and the subs are 42 minutes long you have to convert the framerate of the subs. Then, I do Find and replace \n with space THEN Find and replace space with _ so it’s like i_am_sad rather than i am sad. I also do find and replace with . with ._ ? with ?_ and ! with !_ to ensure all the lines contain an underscore _. Order of the find and replace is important here! I first eliminate line breaks then replace all the spaces with an underscore. I prefer using English subs and the timing is usually better and some french subs have subpar, abyssmal timing.
4) go through ep via potplayer using loop by subtitle line- when i find a line of interest I mark the line in the transcript with +, then make a line break by pressing enter, I press numpad 4 to copy the subtitle on the potplayer screen. i suppose + would be problematic if math is featured in the episode. guess you could come up with something else besides +. paste the line on notepad. rinse and repeat and make sure stuff is in order.
So now when I press Right Enter the script presses numpad 4 to copy the line from potplayer, presses HOME button to bring you to the beginning of the line you are on notepad, adds +++ , presses enter, inserts ####, then presses control v to paste the potplayer line, then inserts ### under the line. Because I have to rely on the enter button I have to set notepad to format->word wrap OFF. I press the RIGHT enter while notepad is active. the potplayer global shortcut numpad 4 does not require potplayer to be the active window
I also made another script for copying the line the insertion point is on. When I press / it duplicates the line I’m on notepad. Necessary since they sometimes break up the sentence in half in the subs and all the manual clicking etc add up
so for the most part I am pressing 7, 9, /, right enter, and the arrow buttons to mine my sentences
filter for _ and filter for + if you didn’t screw up then you should have the same number of lines . paste in excel or excel-like program to confirm and also check with the .tsv that subs2srs generates
Paste both into excel or excel-like program to check they match. If they don’t figure out why.
7) generate subs2srs deck and condensed audio using the filter you generated and the subtitle file. paste the ; crap into only generate cards for lines that CONTAIN. or save the text into a .txt then open the .txt in the designated area in subs2srs. I think i only have the option of opening the .txt in the designated area because the text is so long. Hit preview a couple times before generating to ensure the lines are being filtered as desired. I pad the timing for the deck in subs2srs and i do not pad the timing in subs2srs for the condensed audio. for condensed audio I open the subtitle file in aegisub and lead-ins/lead-outs and tell it to make adjust subtitles continuous under timing post-processor
you can only generate the subs2srs deck using ONE subtitle file which is the one with the _ you used to mine from potplayer. if you use 2 subtitle files it will combine lines etc and mess up the number of total lines generated.
7b) combine mp3 of condensed audio with makeitone mp3 album maker. then run truncate silence on audacity.
8) paste the subs2srs file into excel. I always find and replace quotation marks to get rid of ” before pasting. paste the text you filtered for + next to the expression column. if they don’t match up figure out why and fix it via shifting etc ie if it’s off by one it should be an easy fix. Even if the number of lines is the same it’s possible that the lines are off by one etc somewhere so be sure to check here and there
9) deepl translate the text in the filtered text that contain + and paste into excel
10) import into anki and paste the media files into anki.collection media folder. I usually replace the _ before importing into anki. Do note that the [.mp3] area etc has _ so make sure you only do find and replace for the columns that contain the dialogue
11) learn using subs2srs! i use lingoes pop-up dictionary and goldendict to look up words . use morphman if you want. I LIKE MORphman because i can feed myself 1t = i + 1 sentences and i can make the unknown word huge
b is line beore and a is line after
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links to transcript sites:
German:
notable shows are x-files, charmed, angel, buffy http://www.tv-scripte.de/ also for subs2srs decks for anime dubs check out the german discord for refold.
after selecting an episodes click ON Voir le script de l’épisode en VF I personally recommend episodes 6.25 & 7.1 which are infamous mystery episodes.
hypnoseries. After finding the show click on les episodes-> scroll down -> click on vf. If you only see VO there’s no french dub transcript.
There are some shows where they paste the french subtitles (not the dub dialogue) into the VF section usually it has the subtitle timing and stuff so it’s very obvious.
These are some shows with VF section! there’s lots more gossip girl desperate housewives 1×1 to 1×3, 1×8, 2×1 grey’s anatomy season 1, lost
heroes big bang theory charmed buffy the vampire player bones arrow
nothing as in no vf section: MAD MEN, breaking bad better call saul How to get away with murder CROWN Schitts creek x-files south park
allegedly VF (I didn’t check it myself) : friends, angel, one tree hill, smallville, supernatural, flash, prison break, veronica mars , pretty little liars, lucifer, glee
stuff pasted in VF isn’t the dub dialogue: game of thrones, malcolm in the middle, how i met your mother
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for the VIDS – find the french dub via googling vf regarder or get the dvds since they have french dubs on them… though for the simpsons i think it’s the canadian french dub rather than the french dub so the transcript will not matchhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
search folge for german dubs – on dailymotion – angel – charmed – buffy. there’s also some other special sites out there~
learning from a dub definitely you saves you a lot of hassle of reading through a lotta entries in the dictionary since they did a good job with the french dub. i don’t own any rubber stamps… marge is known for having an unpleasant voice and it’s more unpleasant in the french dub imo lol
( I was surprised they did the song for a Conan movie. I only watched some Conan movies in Japanese just to learn mandarin since the subs match the dub. But the movies I saw were solid movies with a plot so it’s serendipity at its best. at first I didn’t like tokyo jihen’s new album. I would listen to the songs but I felt nothing and I just didn’t feel a connection. I go back to the album a week or two later and now I’m obsessed and I gotta listen to the songs over and over again until I get over them. Though im not sure it’s possible since I’m still not over their song tokyo from the last album/single. I could hear that a couple hundred more times. I have yet to grow sick of it. Just replace the word Tokyo with whatever city you live in or live near or been to a lot and relate away. )
CSS gets pasted into the Styling FIELD which you access through the add card window. Just click on cards… (next to the Fields…)
This stuff gets pasted in Styling (shared between cards)
Back :
This CSS code let’s you change the css for the first letter of the word after a line break which is <p> . so for the card picture I put the <p> before the field name a la <p>{{Word}}. In the back I have it as {{Word}} without the <p> preceding it. In the card text themselves I use <br> instead of <p> so I don’t get all these blanked out letters every time there is a line break. By default anki uses <br> for line breaks so it only becomes an issue when I mass import stuff. This is really useful for automatically making single cloze cards out of basic cards. It’s especially the case for 1-2 syllable Korean words. Seeing the default vocab card format with just the word or cards with the word and the definition on the front do nothing for me so I’m so glad there’s a CSS way to automate this.
The css applies to both sides of the card based on the way it’s written. However you can modify it so that the first-letter of the word after p looks a certain way in the front and a certain on the back. I don’t bother with that because I just need something clozed in the front.
CSS for italic/bold/underline This stuff gets pasted in Styling (shared between cards)
b {color: #000000; font-size:32px ;} .front i {color: #ffffff; font-size:1px ; } .ba i {color: #black; font-size:28px; font-style: normal; font-weight: bold;
It let’s you change the css of the text based on whether the text is bold, underlined, or italicized. So if you want you can make the underlined text ununderlined and bold or italicized text not italicized etc etc.
So in my css code it changes the color of bold text to black and makes the font a bigger size than the non-bolded part. It makes the Italicized text disappear pretty much since I told it to make it white and tiny. It makes the italic text on the back of the card black, bold, and a little bigger and NOT ITALICIZED. For the .ba i you have to paste <div class=ba> in the Back Template section to apply it. Likewise you have to paste <dic class=Front> in the front template section to apply it. The italic thing is so convenient because there’s many times I’d rather italicize it then to delete the text or move the text another field. also I never italicize text since I’d rather underline or bold the text so I adore this css trick.
example
back:
the [] and the text inside of it were italicized
Javascript for find and replace text
I use this with an autohotkey script (wraps selected text with *- etc ) so I can easily make the font size of the text bigger. so it replaces *- with <span style =~> and it replaces -* with </span>. For this javascript to work you have to paste <div class=”front”> in the Front Template to apply it. The reason I use this despite the ability to modify the CSS of clozed text via .cloze is because the .cloze only applies to the cloze you’re being tested on. So if you’re being tested on C1 card only the text that’s clozed with c1 are affected by the .cloze css to make the text bigger etc etc. Meanwhile the C2 stuff is unaffected.
.cloze { font-size: 40px; font-weight: bold;
This gets pasted in the Front Template section: <script> fields = document.querySelectorAll(‘.front’); for(var i=0; i<fields.length; i++) { fields[i].innerHTML = fields[i].innerHTML .replace(/\*-/g, ‘ <span style=”font-size:49px”>’) .replace(/-\*/g, ‘</span>’) } </script>
Javascript for changing appearance of clozes This javascript changes the appearance of cloze from the default {..} to |___|.
This gets pasted in the Front Template section:
<script> var cloze = document.querySelectorAll(“.cloze”); for(var i = 0; i < cloze.length; i++){ cloze[i].textContent = “| __|”; } </script>
Lastly, I find these regex codes useful. In anki if you go to browse and and press control alt f you can find and replace text. so with [a-zA-Z][a-zA-Z0-9]* in the find field with regular expression checked you can delete all the english in a field and with [\u3131-\uD79D]* with regular expression checked you can delete all the hangeul in a field. Sometimes I want to put a field on the front but it gives away the answer so this is a really easy surefire way to kill the answer.
TL;DR: 3 reasons: ignoring the opportunity cost when far superior methods are present, misaligned actions with goals, and busywork as useful work.
My Definitions:
By taking notes I mean what you do during your own study sessions: creating notes by summarizing from the textbook, highlighting important parts on your notes, and review your notes later by re-reading. I don’t mean taking notes from your teacher or professor during class or lecture, summarizing what being is said.
Highlighting: in the literature, it means doing so on the textbook. In this article, I refer to highlighting on your notes.
Summarizing: rewriting from the textbook version to your own simplified version
I’ve pictured this scenario where a white person is walking around with a Japanese person and the white guy asks the Japanese guy what does that say and the thing they’re pointing to is scribble aka archaic writing.
Reading archaic writing is a skill that I never developed from just immersing in Japanese since I don’t read stuff written in the cursive writing etc. Sometimes I can figure it out and sometimes I’m like wtf? I remember pausing the screen while watching JIN when Nokaze or whoever would send letters to JIN and I’d be like how he does he read that scribble or I’d be able to read some of it. Luckily, he usually read the letter aloud in the narration etc so I didn’t have to read that to enjoy the show. Now that I think about it I’ve seen a lot of handwritten Japanese on Japanese tv shows since they always make people write letters and read them on the show. those are usually legible. I always get excited whenever I spot a mistake in handwritten Japanese lol. Check out my previous post for an exmplae
I later learned it’s not just hand-writing scribble; it’s olden japanese hand scribble. This was back in 2009 when d-addicts was a thing and I was watching the show with Japanese subtitles. I was thinking how unhelpful korean subtitles are for watching time period dramas as a Korean learner in that even if you watch with the korean subtitles they don’t help you understand the show when it comes to encounters with new words. English subs would be more helpful honestly in terms of whatever learning you can accomplish while watching a drama like a normal person (no pausing, rewinding, etc) and looking up zero things in the dictionary since my ears aren’t broken and I want to know what the words mean not how to spell them. This is a statement I’d never say about Japanese because of the inherent nature of its writing system. But in the end it doesn’t matter because I don’t watch Korean dramas since they’re unwatchable. This tangent is just a long-winded of saying that watching JIN with Japanese subtitles was an ABSOLUTE pleasure. J subs are a MUST for jidaigeki imo. I contemplated watching ryoma-den at one point because it was getting buzz and yoshida from black mayonnaise loved it but I never watched it but if I did I would watch j-subs.
I’ve mentioned before on a post about the finale of JIN season 2 about the behind the scenes scoop on the letter reading scene. The actor who plays Jin decided to read the letter for the FIRST time on the FIRST take so that he can give a genuine reaction while in character. All I thought while watching that scene is how does he read that shit lol. I was genuinely curious how well modern-day Japanese people can read the scribbles.
I was digging into this topic again because I read this on dokushometer
The person posted links to website that will teach you all that you need to know so you can learn to read Japanese that’s written in those specific styles and of course if you want to read old Japanese (edo era etc) you have to learn the traditional forms of kanji. This elicited the thought that learning Japanese is never-ending if you are obsessed with being super skillful or perfect in Japanese with even reading; I don’t feel like learning how to read that stuff because I don’t read that kinda stuff and I don’t have interest in shodou. I contemplated looking through it since i am into writing messy, quickly, taking shortcuts etc and i love getting tips. but i never took a deep dive look into it. though from the cursory look, I already do some of the truncating they do when I handwrite Japanese… it’s human nature to want to be lazy lol. Why write all the individual strokes when you can draw a wavy/squiggly line.
If you are dead set on perfection in every aspect of Japanese and go down all these rabbit holes like pitch accent or even reading all types of Japanese writing it’s never-ending…. at the end of the day you have to follow your heart do whatever interests you the most. for me that does not involve learning how to read cursive/archaic japanese. Time is precious and I have a lot of other more practical activities to use my time towards. Maybe I’ll change my mind in the future. w’knows
The post was aptly titled blast from the past like the YG post because it took me a very long time to post it and I never went back to click on the links from the chiebukuro answer. I have many interests and it’s just not one of them.
AND on a japanese 101 note I found out this year that PANSA means panther! I never looked it up and I think I even saw a bit of the commercial for black panther when i was watching hanseikai. I never gave a thought to the word PANSA until the london heart’s hliarious dokkiri on ogata when ogata said ko-yo-te. I’ve probably heard this word a couple hundred times if not thousands of times by now. Better late than NEver I guess.
On the topic of handwriting Japanese: I’m not into journaling but I do sporadically freewrite in Japanese. I scoff and roll my eyes at the silly blogs that tell people to read the news in their target language everyday or start a diary in the target language because everyone knows no one will keep that habit going for long unless they truly enjoy those activities. FOr me I don’t give a shit about the news in English and I also unsurprisingly don’t give a shit about the news in Korean and in Japanese especially the boring political articles. Occasionally I’ll read news articles that interesting ie scandals or if it’s about a topic I find interesting but I don’t go out of my way to buy a newspaper or visit the news websites daily etc. My freewriting activity is organic because I only do it if I feel like doing it. I don’t follow any schedule so the interval between entries could be days, months, or weeks. Every time I go to write, I’m amazed by the kanji I remember as well as the ones I don’t remember (sometimes I just blank out) since I’ve had problems with my heisig deck in the past which led to be stop doing it. Nowadays I only do kakitori cards since I combined some amazing pre-made decks.
So maybe a year or two ago I tried turning my spiral notebook sideways to write vertically in Japanese. I’ve written words or a sentence vertically before but I’ve never tried it for my freewriting. I noticed that writing Japanese vertically is easier and more practical. I never knew because I never tried it! I hate handwriting in general so I appreciate anything that lessens the burden. I’m not into buying expensive notebooks, stationary, pens, etc so I’m glad that I tried it and loved it. I write extremely messy and I plan to throw the notebok away after filling it so I have no interest spending money on nice notebooks. Writing Japanese has definitely help me hone in my skills in writing in my own sougyou-esque handwriting style.
The screenshot is one of my earlier attempts before I optimized it. I like having the translation under the Chinese and I like having an indent before the rhombus.
optimized example:
I’m using this to learn from a bizarre chinese cartoon so I can solidify my Chinese grammar skills. that just means I want to have less WTF does this shit mean moments which is when I come across sentences where I know all the hanzi but don’t understand the sentence. Using deepL because I don’t have english subs and getting incomprehensible input IS a waste of time and I’m acutely aware of the limitations and short-comings of translation programs since I ain’t monolingual and I don’t need to be getting knee-deep in the pop-up dictionary entry with 10+ meanings to be some pure, ascetic language learner when I’d rather just move the f on to the next line that interests me since deepL kicks ass. deepL > google as far as I can tell. BTW I’m not really watching the cartoon. I don’t have time to watch it so if I’m spending time with it’s gonna be quality time aka study time. If you break it down they’re not even talking half the time (make a condensed audio mp3 using subs2srs and filter out duplicates and lines shorter than 4 characters etc etc and it’s half the length of the video or les) not to mention this donghua is UGLY. I treat it like an audiobook and loop the audio by subtitle line endlessly on potplayer. For real audiobooks you can use workaudiobook. Speaking of audiobooks, books are way out of my league currently lol but I’m taking my baby steps. I need more grammar skillllls. I like going from most common/useful to less common which is dialogue-stuff that comes out of people’s mouths – > internet articles/sites about interesting topics -> books. it makes no sense to tackle books/internet articles when i can’t even deal with conversations.
I have set it up in potplayer so that
when I press alt number pad 7 it goes to the previous subtitle line and loops that subtitle,
when i press alt number pad 9 it goes to the next subtitle and loops that subtitle,
when i press altnumpad 5 or / it stops the looping,
it goes to the previous subtitle when i press alt numb pad 1,
it goes to the next subtitle line when i press alt num pad 3 line,
it copies the subtitle line on the screen when i press alt num 4 ( if you use a clipboard manager like copyq or ditto you can collect all the subtitle lines you copy etc etc).
when I press x it slows down the playback speed by 0.1, when I press c it speeds up the playback speed by 0.1 and when I press z it resets it back to 1.0x. Needlessly to say I never make it play slower than 1x. I experiment with making it play it faster 1.3x 1.5 x etc
I need the shortcut for stopping the loop because sometimes the shortcut for the next line/previous line don’t work if the timing of the subs overlap with each other. the beauty of potplayer that you can make the shortcuts GLOBAL which enables the shortcuts to be active even when potplayer isn’t the active window. I was considering captionpop.com for a hot for a second then i realized there’s no point since the chinese subs are off by 1 second for some of the eps and potplayer is SUPERIOR. you can’t even loop audio on captionpop,,, why not?? i had a similar set up with workaudiobook that i setup with autohotkey. global shortkeys are very convenient.
MEDIAFIRE LINKs to potplayer INI and reg file that has my settings .
PINYIN READER https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/pinyin-reader/hledmlpbeiablkglomlminfemnepgjlp
it works with the pop-up dictionaries like inkah, zhongwen, zhongzhong. the other pinyin extensions do not work with the pop-up dictionaries which makes them shit. the pinyin generated is not 100% accurate though. I realized I want this because I don’t want to be hovering over words just to get the pinyin (when I know the word means due to japanese/korean Or it’s a noun that deepl clearly translated correctly or the hanzi that make up the word are super logical and are literally screaming the meaning of the word at the top of their lungs). hovering the mouse over the word is burdensome lol. lessening the burden and saving time is important to me.
hmm this one seems promising. chinese words separator. it looks better than pinyin reader aesthetically. it inserts spaces so if it parses wrong you may be sol? it seems aware of the multiple parsing possibilities unlike zerotoheroreader. gotta use it and see. EDIT: I definitely prefer this to PINYIN READER and the spacing/parsing thing does not interfere with the pop-up dictionary 🙂
It even gives you the option of playing tss when you hover over the word. but i think i prefer it when it plays the TTS for the whole sentence on hover ie mouse tooltip translator or translator instantaneous above
I tried this READER https://www.zerotohero.ca/en/zh/reader since it adds pinyin on top but I don’t like the pop-up dictionary. the pictures seem cool but half the time the picture is literally the damn characters and the pop-up is more cumbersome to get rid of compared to the chrome pop-up extensions. I just want to finish reading/consuming the text…. and the window gets in the way of that. though in the short time I did use it I happily noticed that it would say the noun is hsk 6 or hsk 7-9 ( the new one) but it was like hsk 1-2 to me since I already know the word in japanese. I was hopeful that this site would be useful since it takes less effort to hover over the words but the window doesn’t go away as easily as zhongzhong etc so it’s counterproductive. also if the herotozero reader parses incorrectly you’re f’ed because it inserts spaces between the parsing so zhongzhong/zhongwen/inkah won’t work even if you hover over the text.so I choose the chrome pop-up extensions over this.
On captionpop you press T to reveal translation, R to repeat, Up arrow for previous subtitle, Down arrow for next subtitle
captionpop extension – so this extension let’s you expediently go from youtube to the captionpop website to learn from the youtube video you’re on. I don’t care for that because I need my endless looping but I LOVE how it shows me which youtube vids have subtitles. Sometimes what happens is that I notice the video has the CC icon or I specifically search and filter for vids that have caption then I click on the video and the subtitles are NOT IN Mandarin. In those cases it’s usually English subtitles. This plugin says under the video listing in search/playlists/channel/everywhere what language the subtitles are in ie simplified chinese, english, french, arabic, no subtitles, etc.
Force custom font chrome extension – i have my undying love for 何尼玛-细体 常规. I think it’s also called heiti
I tend to make the deepL parallel text then publish it to the internet via simplenote.com/nimbusnote since chrome pop-up dictionary extensions suck and only works on real websites and not on .html files on the computer for whatever reason.
I’m sure I’ll reach a point where making parallel texts won’t be worth the effort but for now it’s worth it. I don’t care for “parallel” texts where the text are side by side.. that is WAY too much eye-darting and eye-fatigue-inducing for me.
I chose the Chinese cartoon because it’s bizarre, overdramatic, clear in the tones/pronunciation due to the voice acting, entertainment made for natives by natives, and at my level. ( the herotozero lists it under hsk3. Alls I know is that I am way past hsk1 and 2) I think it’s at an ideal level of difficulty plus I know Japanese and I have a popup dictionary etc. If there’s too little to learn I would notice and move onto something else unless the content is super compelling in which case I can bask in my near perfect comprehension. if there’s way too much to learn, or impossible or difficult, it’s not efficient. With my setup I constantly press num alt pad 9 once to go to the next line and 2 times to skip the line. I save a little time with the line skipping since parallel text tells me what the next subtitle line will be.
I believe in learning in a logical order of learning from easier stuff to more difficult stuff and learning from stuff that’s made by natives for natives. I want to focus on conversational stuff since i gotta learn from the most common to the least common stuff. So I assume a cartoon that a 8 year old?? Understands 100% or nearly 100% would be a good source to learn mandarin from. They use so much chengyu/4 letter hanzi words that aren’t idioms or maybe that’s just how Chinese is. At least 10-30 chengyu / 4 character hanzi word that’s not Chengyu per ep ! How many do you need to know to understand most convos?? They definitely use more 4 character words than korean/Japanese which isn’t surprising
screenshots of chrome + zhongzhong? zhongwen? + chinese words separator + potplayer ( i barely look at potplayer since i treat the cartoon like an audiobook and i’m using a black and white eink computer screen anyway..) + force custom font extension ( i love how it affects zhongzhong/zhongwen too!) . Good fonts make all the difference! Also I love how you can display simplified and traditional characters when you hover over the word using zhongzzhong/zhongwen. It’s really helpful for recognizing and connecting the character to the Japanese equivalent because otherwise I would treat it like a new character lolz.
At first I was apprehensive about continuing this study/exposure/comprehensible input method because the audio for the lines would loop so much since it’s on an infinite loop until i tell it to stop looping or go to the next line. Part of it was due to my shoddy chinese grammar skills and part of it was me not not having decided what I wanted to get out of this. As for the former that fixed itself after x eps.. .I don’t remember the exact number (maybe 10? 5? no idea) but the line rarely loops more than 5 times nowadays. It was a combination of getting my comprehensible input, getting used to the show/chinese etc and the hsk 1-6 grammar deck etc etc.
As for the latter, at first I wasn’t sure what I want to get out of the line before I pressed NEXT LINE aka alt num 9. Questions like should I relisten to see if I can hear the tones ? ( I’m saying HEAR not MEMORIZE or REMEMBER) or relisten to see if I can really hear the pinyin sounds clearly? Or should I just press next as soon as I comprehend the sentence or improve my comprehension of it whether it be from deepL or from the pop-up dictionary. so if I want to strive for perfection and aim to relisten for the pinyin, tones, meaning, effortless comprehension, etc etc for each line it’s gonna take longer since i gotta keep the audio looping but benefits don’t outweigh the downsides. For example even if I paid attention to the tones I ain’t gonna remember them… simple as that. even if i make a concerted effort to remember the meaning of the word or to pay attention to the meaning of each character that make up the word (since i know japanese) it doesn’t guarantee i’ll remember shit since I’m gonna remember them when I hear them x number of times in multiple contexts… end of story. So I decided to focus on comprehension and understanding and ignore the re-listening just for the sake of pinyin/tones unless i felt particularly compelled for a specific word or phrase which never happens. I also have to remember that I’m going to make a subs2srs deck at the end anyway…
here’s some chinese soft-subbed (that is the KEY WORD) kiddie cartoons that are great for learning since they mostly have short lines! Just providing more options beyond softsubbed peppa the pig on youtube: i can’t learn from these cartoons because they’re too easy though I wish knew about these options when I was a beginner! By easy I mean the ratio of unknown/known is not ideal. I definitely don’t know every single word in the cartoon but it’s not worth learning from the cartoon because it’s too easy. I can tell it’s not at my level. hmm or maybe not… since learning from mandarin subs of american movies with matching softsubs is probably more fun and less frustrating ? (beause you got the english subs and dubs are always going to be easier than something that was originally mandarin. some of them are kids movie so it’s as easy as it’s gonna get). Speaking of dubs I thought it was unintentionally HILARIOUS how they call tenma-sensei denma-sun-seng in the korean dub of monster. It’s all the more hilarious because they say his name OFTEN on the show. It’s literally impossible to take the show seriously with them saying denma every 10 seconds if you know Japanese because it’s just funny. In this case they really should’ve kept it as TENMA or just change everyone’s Japanese names to Korean names. I thought it was funny when they called hermione hermi in the mandarin but this denma thing is hilarious.
autohotkey at work with shortcut left arrow. pasting the text of field 1 into deepL then pasting the translation into the field. nowadays there’s also a deepl plugin for anki for generating trnasltaions. haven’t used it though
autohotkey at work. looking up the word via double click on lingoes and another word on goldendict via highlighting and pressing UP ( i made a shortcut for the insert key to double click too). now there’s a plugin that generates batch translations using deepL too though… i don’t use that though.
9-2022 EDIT: I use Qtranslate instead of deepl now. much faster and better 🙂 it translates so quickly.
<- so in the gif I have the anki plugin copy2Clipboard for copying field 1 automatically when the new card appears. i press the left arrow while the anki window that has AUDIO in its title is active which triggers control alt t which is the qtranslate shortcut for translting the clipboard. then i click on qtranslate to activate it then put my mouse over qtranslate over the translated field then roll the mousewheel down which selects, copies and pastes the translation text into anki. i just love how i get instant translation by pressing the left arrow on anki. the program deepl made for itself is laggy sometimes. the other upside for qtranslte is that you can use other translator services too – mediafire for updated 10.2022 ahk scripts ♥ ★ ❅ ✿ i also have it set so that when i press right arrow it copies before sending control alt t. hmmm i ended up joining 2 scripts together so that i don’t have to position the mouse over the qtranslate field to paste it into anki . the scripts maximizes qtranslate then clicks on a coordinate before selecting and copying which was how i had it set up for deepL. combined tl and copy paste into && wheeldown paste with the winmaximize + click coordinates in case in doesn’t paste it or something… hopefully i’lll never have to use it.
I absolutely love technology and how you can increase efficiency by combining everything together. I’m all about avoiding manually clicking, pasting 5 billion times!! My main motivation for posting this is to spread the word about autohotkey which enables me to break from using anki 2.0 for reviewing mandarin on anki (I use both anki 2.1 and anki 2.0 to use the plugins). I was really attached to anki 2.0 because of wordquery since it doesn’t work on anki 2.1 even with fastwordquery – the dictionaries just DO NOT show up. So I tried to see if stardict is usable and it is once I change the font which is an impossible feat for goldendict (don’t need ya anyway) and i know from past experience that autohotkey makes everything more convenient, useful, efficient. The end result of combining autohotkey and stardict is better than wordquery so I made the transition to anki 2.1 for anki minus search cards by length plugin on anki 2.0. Morphman and mandarin is a pretty sick combo since there’s no conjugations in mandarin. I never used morphman/subs2srs for korean/japanese because my korean/japanese were already too good to use those tools when i found out about subs2srs/when it came into existance lol… it’d be ridiculously time-sucking for very little benefit. i don’t need audio and i don’t have time for anki cards with audio. I do use the MASS TAGGER function of morphman for Korean because I have A LOT OF cards dumped into anki from HUGE tables from a japanese site and dictionaries with example sentences etc etc… that aspect of morphman is worth it for korean. I can easily curate or segregate the potentially useful cards from the useless cards.
programs:
autohotkey lingoes pop-up dictionary goldendict qtranslate clipboard program anki 2.1 & anki 2.0 stardict deepl
lingoes dictionary – it’s an off-line pop-up dictionary that works on double click. it works for 1-2 syllable chinese words after I run the add pinyin on top of hanzi inserts spaces between the words. I double click to get the pop-up dictionary instead of manually highlighting the word when the parsing is perfect. of course the parsing isn’t 100% accurate but it’s pretty damn good. This prompted me to make an autohotkey to double click when i press insert.. i also set it so that lingoes looks up the words that are highlighted so I do that for words that are 3 syllables or longer.as much as i love pinyin helper’s definition table… scrolling and pressing page down and end is kinda annoying . I’d say 98% of the time i use lingoes/goldendict and have no use for the definition table. also since i’m using morphman and seeing it i+1 stuff most of the time i rely on lingoes over the pinyin helper definition table since i usually just need to look up 1 word. There have been times where the definition table has it and lingoes doesn’t so i love having options. i think the biggest dictionary on lingoes is the naver c-k one. lingoes has J/K/E dictionaries for mandarin!
stardict dictionary – dictionaries are a must because even though the pinyin helper anki addon generates the english definitions sometimes I want a MORE detailed explanation (it makes it easier to remember/understand the word) or another explanation or a dictionary example sentence or hear it from a japanese/korean point of view. in general korean/japanese dictionaries are more useful than english dictionaries… which makes sense since those languages are closer to chinese than english. Dictionaries also come in handy when the pinyin helper doesn’t parse correctly which is a rare occurrence.
<__–STARDICT with an iffy font 😦
hmm i think all in all i like the fonts 何尼玛-细体 常规 and .黒体-日本語 because they’re very readable. i think you have to google heiti to download the font. I love how the different languages are distinct and clear in one glance as to what’s korean, japanese, mandarin. the font in the screenshot is noto sans and i now have the font set as 黒体-日本語 which is so much better.
GOLDENDICT
goldendict has a pop-up dictionary function but i don’t care for it because it doesn’t let me change the font-size/window color etc . or so i thought! I don’t use stardict anymore since only goldendict has the pop-up dictionary function! I figured out how to change the font via googling but it’s totally worth it. i set up the keyboard shortcut for the pop-up dictionary in goldendictionary to alt + g and then i used autohotkey to make it what i want in ANKI which is BACKSPACE. When I press BACKSPACE on the anki window titled AUDIO (name of my anki profile), the autohotkey script double clicks, copies the highlighted text and sends alt + g that goldendict likes. I also set up an autohotkey to copy and send alt + g for words that are 3 syllables and longer. Lingoes has dictionaries that stardict/goldendict doesn’t have and stardict/goldendict has dictionaries that lingoes doesn’t have so I like having 2 pop-up dictionaries that work in anki. on anki i press insert or double click on the word to bring up lingoes and if lingoes fails then i can press backspace to bring up the goldendict pop-up dictionary or i press backspace with the mouse hovered over the word which brings up both. i think stardict dictionary is still useful even though i can’t use it as a pop-up dictionary because on the main window it does the search as you type thing and show you partial matches while goldendict doesn’t and i can’t see anything in the option about enabling that. that feature is useful for korean and doesn’t make much of a difference for mandarin. but in all honesty i have the authoktey set up so that if goldendict pop-up dictionary doesn’t find it, the autohotkey goes to google/daum/etc
it also contains stardict/lingoes dictionaries that I use for korean/chinese – k-j, ke, k-k, c-e, c-k, c-j. I love how I get good coverage with multiple dictionaries and I have autothotkey so if i want i can go to the internet dictionary with a click. i had to modify the stardict dictionaries i use for wordquery on anki 2.0 because <br/> shows up <br/> as is the case with <font style so I did find and replace with \N etc etc to make it look pretty and functional ( I got the fix!!! ) . I prefer lingoes pop-up dictionary so if a dictionary exists as lingoes dictionary and stardict dictionary i only load the dictionary into lingoes. some dictionaries are only available as lingoes and some are only available as stardict . for stardict the mediafire link for korean includes the korean-wiki with 225,331 words, standard korean dic that contains 366 ,507 words, comprehensive dictionary that i made from the online dictionary that has over a million entries has 926,670 words. also recently got dz dics from this russian site = Explanatory Dictionary of Korean Language (Kor-Kor) (for GoldenDict, UTF-8, Version 1.0 red. 16.01.2020) (headwords: 279,210)
I had to open goldendict, click on help -> configuration folder-> make a folder in the styles in folder. I named it me. Then i pasted the qt style and article style with the font/color rendering specified to my needs. I had to add extra crap for Korean TEXT. Then i had to go back to options in goldendict and change my theme to “me.” I had to rename all the korean dictionaries with (ko-ko) at the end to get the font to show up because i love seoulhangang ! for some reason.黒体-日本語 does not work but 何尼玛-细体 常规 works… but they’re nearly the same so i’m happy 🙂 It’s a pain to figure out but I like how the rendering is customizable since i can’t find a font that looks nice in japanese/korean/mandarin/english. I do like the English and Japanese text-font of the Chinese font though.
deepL – UPDATE: now I prefer the QTRANSLATE program which includes deepl but it is much faster. amazing pop-up dictionary. Can’t believe it’s free amazing! it makes mandarin subs2srs cards so much more useful since the problem is I know some/most/all the characters in the sentence but i have no idea wtf it means. it’s all about comprehensible input NOT incomprehensible input which is a legit waste of time. deepl is like a must in my eyes lol. actally Qtranslate is better!
UPDATE now I usually mass translate using the deepL plugon on anki. the plugin translates all them cards in the browser 🙂
The other option for a pop-up dictionary is a hover dictionary via zhongzhong /zhongwen on chrome. you can either go on ankiweb.net and do reviews on the browser to do that OR use the Copy2Clipboard addon + texthooker.com + toggle clipboard inserter on chrome. https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/1525025114
there’s also yomichan which allows for c-j in addition to c-e
anki plugins:
advanced copy fields
morphman
multi-column note editor
set font size
quick field navigation
tagger toggler fork – TAG TOGGLER
speed focus mode auto-alert auto-reveal
zoom 21
chinese companion -frequency sort hsk suspend
Copy2Clipboard
Pinyin on top of Hanzi
search card by length – only anki 2.0
♆➸➸➸♡➸➸➸♡ ♕♘ ♞♜ ❅
advanced copy fields I use this for swapping fields, copying fields etc. on a related note i use [ a-zA_Z}[a-zA-Z0-9]* and [\u4e00-\u9fa5]* for getting rid of english text/mandarin text respectively. you have check regular expression to make it work.
morphman definitely worth tinkering with the settings by following mattvsjapan’s guide like what’s considered too short and too long, what’s considered mature, css on the unknown morphs (I made them huge and bold lol) etc. i had to change the config.py so that it does not skip morphs i saw that day since just changing it in the options didn’t do shit. I also made an external.db and dumped into hsk1-2 stuff so i don’t have to see shit like wo shi sensei. i tag and suspend cards that are tagged MM_toolong because morphman still shows them sometimes and it’s infuriating… Actually I prefer using search cards by length on anki 2.0 for suspending. most of the times if it’s over 12 characters it’s just way too hard and not ideal. it makes more sense to expose myself to a shitton load of sentences that are 5-9 characters long etc since i have a fighting chance of comprehending them. I use autohotkey to save words/sentence patterns to a .txt during reviews. I gather up cards that contain the words/sentence patterns I collect by searching in the browser and tagging. I search at least 30-40 things at a time using Expression:(*word1* or * word2*) etc etc. My other option is to use MASS TAGGER feature of morphman to tag the cards that contain the words in the pinyin field that was generated using pinyin helper since the parser is pretty good. this only works if you change the morhpman cardtype to SPACED LANGUAGES. The other thing I figured out is that you can search the field that contains the definitions generated by pinyin helper to gather similar cards like if I search the word idiom I can gather up all the cards that contain an idiom. The idiom cards that are tagged 0.5t are very useful!
multi-column note editor
set font size default font is too small on anki ui
quick field navigation I use this plugin to save time and it enables the authotkey scripts to work. technically you could still get the scripts to work by sending tab a bunch of times instead of sending control 6 or whatever field it is
this one can be very useful because you can easily tag cards during initial reviews. I either tag the card with something, suspend the card, delete the card, or mark the card by pressing asterisk. i’m still experimenting around to see what tags are most useful i have stuff like “EXISTS-in-japanese” “ez-hanzi-logical” “easy-to-remember-tones” (when the tone repeats like 22 or 44) “grammar” “vocab” “zze” (for easy cards that are mm_already) “4-ji” for words that are at least 4 chararcters long that don’t have “iidiom” in the definition generated by pinyin helper, “ssimliar-sounds” – if the sounds that sound the same appear in succession in the sentence (if you watch the youtube video about z/c/j/ch etc etc you’re like they sound totally different or a little different then you hear shit at native speed and then you’re like yep i’m back at square one. can’t really force your ears/brains to be woke). the plugin can also TAG AND suspend the card if you want and I definitely do that for cards that are too easy or too hard or the audio is f
‘ed up etc. lol i found a nasty, random example from subs2srs that i tagged as easy-to-remember-tones:
✎ 它们会用大便攻击 它们会用大便攻击 ♥ ☂ Those throw poop at you.. 4 4 4 4 | 11 .
here’s a more normal sentence:
✎ 逃到书桌后面去 逃到书桌后面去 ♥ ☂ Get behind that bookshelf! 11 | 444
I get amazed when i find sentences where the 4th tone is in succession 6 times in a row
i definitely love my deck that i made outta the cards tagged tones-easy-to-remember. i notice the crap out of the tones of words since the tones are in succession.
I got an idea to also try the tag hhard-unique for words with hanzi that i don’t know and tag ppayAttention for words that seem easy but the meaning isn’t what i expect/predict which is all i do since mandarin is written in chinese chracters and i know japanese ( can’t really turn it off!) . Also I’ve been trying exists-in-japanese tag for words that exist in japanese and means the same thing ( if it means something different i’d tag ppayattention) which means all i have to focus on i remembering the pinyin and the tone. i use the tag ez-hanzi where the hanzi and the meaning are easy and straight forward/logical. i still use vvocab for words that are kinda easy that don’t fit in with any of these tags.
haven’t been really stressing out about tones. i figured learning by association would be as effortless at it comes?? i see no point in trying to memorize or notice or remember tones during subs2srs reviews/inital views since i’m not going to remember it anyway. i just focus on comprehending the card or increasing my comprehension of my card… reading the pinyin and accent marks carefully is a futile exercise… you can’t expect yourself to remember/memorize something in the first encounter.. maybe after 20th encounter or 100th encounter? it depends on the word. i’m assuming like japanese will sound like what it sounds like because they say it the same way 5 billion times as i get my exposure( In this case condensed audio/subs2srs). i’m sure laid back is fine for really common words but it’ll probably require more effort less common words. i’m not interested in output anyway so it’s not a big deal to me. also i can’t type pinyin because i don’t know pinyin… i refuse to memorize/study it lol. I will learn the sounds first and some words so that i have less issues with pinyin cognitive dissonance. pinyin definitely deepened my love for hangeul ! i think i saw yoyo chinese’s video on tones and pinyin a year or two or three ago and i don’t wanna re-watch it or watch other teach chinese youtube vids at this point in time. Also I never got the hype around coloring pinyin for tones… my anki is black and white for good reason. COLOR doesn’t help me.. it’s like expecting to have mastered korean spacing rules from just reading and watching tv ( which does not work since I’m just reading to comprehend and not to memorize how they spaced the words ) . One of tags is mm_alreadyknown for morphman and I was unsure when I want to use it since the word may be really easy becaUse I know Japanese but I don’t know the tones whatsoever. So what I’ve decided to do is use that tag during anki sessions if I have strong conviction tell that I will understand and recognize the word in question outside of anki like condensed audio. There have been times where I’ve surprised myself when I understand words in condensed audio that I’ve seen in anki that I was rather sure that I wouldn’t understand/recognize it outside of anki when I saw the word in anki (after all I have context, hanzi, pinyin, english translation etc always on the FRONT lolz). I realized that I can understand words even if I don’t have the tone numbers memorized and the fact of the matter is that it takes time for me to notice that a word is being pronounced in a specific melody so it literally takes time. I am very aware that I am relying on the characters and pinyin etc in anki to understand the word in anki ( that’s why I love subs2srs for mandarin) and I try to assess harshly in anki whether I’d understand and recognize the word out there in the real world with just the sound. If I notice that I can understand the word outside anki with only the sound i use tag toggler to tag it as alreadyknown. i use that criteria as opposed to memorizing the tones for the hanzi that make up the word etc
i combine this add-on with autohotkey so i can press p for tagging vvocab and grading the card as a 2 which saves me a lot of clicks.
speed focus mode auto-alert auto-reveal I use this plugin to use subs2srs cards like comprehensible input lol. i have reviews set to zero save for a couple curated decks and those are capped low too lol. i mostly see new cards because that’s what i wanna do. Not so sure if such a strategy would work if you only know English. I set it so that it shows the answer after 1 second so i can just grade the card instead of pressing enter then the grade. I also paste the {Audio} 20 times in the back of the card so i don’t have to press R to repeat the audio. i’m still trying to figure out exactly how i want to make subs2srs cards work for me. it makes anki more effortless since those enter button pushes add up. Technically I’m still getting spaced repetition since stuff still repeats (grammar/vocab/whatever patterns) even if 99% of the cards I see are new cards rather than reviews. I’d rather see 20-30 cards with the word I want to learn than one card 20-30 times with the default the anki settings… it’s just more effective. Speaking of which my lax settings are even more lax for mandarin.. it’s like 9 days 10days 15 days and minium interval of 7 days ? I feel like if you can’t learn the card with a minimum interval of 7days, the card shouldn’t even be in anki… thinking in terms of efficiency. I’m thinking the settings should be even more lax since these are subs2srs cards with audio and all that. I tag like crazy while seeing them so I can curate them later
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chinese companion -frequency sort hsk suspend
Copy2Clipboard – to copy field 1 of anki automatically as i go through cards on anki and also for qtranslate to work seamlessly. blurb: Copy2Clipboard will automatically copy a single card field to the clipboard when either the card’s question side is shown or when the card’s answer side is shown (or both, if desired).
Pinyin on top of Hanzi – holy crap this one’s amazing. it adds pinyin AND the definitions FOR EVERY SINGLE WORD IN THE SENTENCE! I don’t know of any plugin that does anything like this for other languages. it literally only works because of the writing system! mandarin is a really convenient language to learn when you have technology on your side! the parser is pretty good but when it fails i just use deepl/stardict/lingoes/naverline site etc using AUTHOTKEY. in the anki UI it calls itself pinyin helper but it’s so much more than just pinyin since it can parse and generate definitions. ONLY DOWNSIDE is that it DOES NOT WORK on traditional characters which is a non-issue for me 🙂 and another downside is the fact that it looks up every single word in the sentence which just adds to scrolling aggravation etc so I absolutely recommend pairing THIS plugin with lingoes pop-up dictionary! i usually don’t need to scroll becuase lingoes works.
search card by length – only anki 2.0 – i still use this in conjunction with anki 2.1 so i can suspend long cards. i search min : 12 etc then tag it as llong and then suspend. suspending cards tagged mm_toolong by morphman doesn’t always catch all the long cards for whatever reason… i also search max:5 and tag as 2short
other premade audio decks i use besides subs2srs include counters, hsk 1-6 ( it has the word and the sentence), immersive chinese, zhongwen redgreenblue, free blueprint mandarin deck, hsk1-6 grammar deck, measure word, spoonfed, mandarinmania, tatoeba, japanes-chinese sentence thing. i only use decks with sentences because isolated words do nothing for me since i can’t make myself associate arbitrary info with arbitrary info. at first i capped the reviews to a really low number like 2 or 5 than i capped the reviews to ZERO but it still worked out since there’s overlap among the decks. anyways it was either i cap the reviews to zero or not do them at all so that’s what i did. now i have the decks capped low instead of zero but i don’t necessarily do them everyday lol.
<- english and korean is shit since they’re both from google translate. thank god deepl exists!! the korean translation is hilarious. kinda surprised the c->english translation beat the c->korean google translation. now that i think about it maybe papago’s c->k translation is good haha. i gotta test it out. k translation says “the friends you have bought peter.” jeez it makes this kid’s anime so dark. this anime is dark but it’s not that dark. the original japanese line is useless af for understanding this mandarin dialogue since that is the point of dubs (turn it into mandarinnnnnnn so people don’t have to read subtitles).. hmmm maybe the line before/after that line coincides with the dub dialogue. but no matter, this sentence is easy now.
mplayer.exe for anki – fixed the annoying popping sound from subs2srs cards
if you install authotkey and run all these scripts chances are some of them won’t work or it’ll go rogue and delete crap since i set it to copy over text in the 9th field of the anki word etc for some scripts since i set it up for my computer/anki but learning about autohotkey isn’t hard just google or bug people on the forums to modify them to your needs. i still share them because it’s helpful to learn from examples. it’s easy to modify the scripts to make it work for you.
I highly recommend getting a gaming mouse with extra buttons if you use autohotkey that way you don’t have to remember the keyboard shortcuts. I wish i was a gamer so i could have found out about gaming mouses sooner
2.1-deepl-stardict.ahk when i press f5: if text is highlighted on anki, the autohotkey script pastes the highlighted text in field 9 of my card then looks up the word on lingoes and stardict. i came up with script because the wordquery plugin was the only reason i wanted to do subs2srs reviews on anki 2.0. now i’m all in for anki 2.1 minus search card by length plugin which i don’t need during reviews/initial view.
if text is not highlighted, it runs text in field 1 on anki through deepl. field 1 is the hanzi expression field. deepl is like a must-have for me since the problem is i know what some/most/all the characters means but i have no f’in idea what the sentence means or i’m pretty damn sure i’m missing nuance and not getting the point of the sentence.
i have deepl set as control +c, control + h
the gif below shows wordquery addon at work to generate definitions from dictionaries with the help of authotkey: I don’t use it for mandarin subs2srs anymore since I figured out how to use stardict/lingoes with autohotkey. still use it for korean cards of course since you can batch in the browse window. I technically set up the autohotkey script to paste the word into the field before looking up stuff so I could batchrun for Chinese cards if I wanna
my cards don’t look fugly like this anymore lol.
dubs are definitely more fun and useful for me as a beginner? intermediate? especially the american movies. they tend to talk more slow and clear and exaggerated compared to chinese dramas. to me in terms of usefulness it’s dubs of american movies/ anime dub (taiwanese) > donghua chinese cartoons > youtube videos > talk/variety shows like the chinese version of produce 101 > chinese dramas. my ranking for most fun to least fun is the same which tells you something. I’m sure it will change as my passive mandarin ability/vocab grows or maybe it will never change lolz. i remember i came across some card from a chinese drama and the person was saying something really simple and easy but i couldn’t hear it because they talked so fast even though i had the audio on auto-repeat 20x… the truth is that they’re taking fast. It just sounds fast to me. Whenever I hear korean or Japanese it’s slow and whenever it’s Chinese it’s wicked fast ie girls planet 999. I almost always watch Japanese talk variety shows at at least 1.2 x nowadays. anyways i’m pretty damn sure that if i was a chinese person who was fluent in mandarin I wouldn’t be watching chinese dramas anyway. kinda like i’m pretyty damn sure if i were a korean person luent in korean i’d never watch korean dramas … there’s just so many other things i’d rather than watch a shitty korean soap opera lol. anyways i’d imagine that learning from drama in subs2srs is more fun than actually watching a drama i since i’ll never watch a chinese drama lol. but in all seriousness if i was fluent in korean/mandarin and knew no english i’d probably be watching american dramas with korean/mandarin subs if i didn’t learn english. and in all seriousness you dont have to watch a single second of dramas or wuxia etc to get good at mandarin.
anki-asterisk.ahk if anki is the active window, when i press asterisk, it sends 2 after 200 miliseconds. if i am marking a card that usually means i want to see it again so i’d rather it just mark some answer and cut down on the keystrokes damnit
anki-browser-frontfront.ahk when i press alt + b, it brings browser to the front
anki-delete.ahk when anki is the active window, when i press delete, it sends control + D. on ank i2.1 they change delete to control + delete which is just a bitch anki-editor-frontfront.ahk when i press alt+ e it brings anki editor to the front anki-front.ahk when i press alt + a it brings anki to the front close-EDITOR.ahk when i press f12 if closes the anki editor and then activates anki screen deepL-from-anki-editor.ahk when i press f7 it runs highlighted text through through deepl. easier to press f7 than cotrol +c, control + h.. hmmm it seems lingoes makes my deepL autohotkey scripts not work so whta i do now is tag cards i want to run deepl on then put those in a deck and run the deepl scripts to my herat’s content after closing LINGOES. deepl-paste-5TH.ahk if deepl is the active window, when i scrolll the mouse DOWN it copies the text in the translation window and then pastes it in to the 5th field of editor. i leave deepl maximized so that the coordinates work everytime. f5-lingoes-paste-F6.ahk if lingoes is the active window, when I press f5 on lingoes it pastes copied text onto the 6th field anki. for some reason i can’t get control + c to work so i do control + c then press f5. I have since figured out how to bypass this problem and that is by the authotkey that automatically copies highlighted text. it works like a charm! f5-stardict-paste.ahk if stardict is the active window, if i press f5 it copies and pastes the highlighted text into the 6th field of anki. i have one of the buttons on the gaming mouse set to f5 so i click on the mouse buttons ifFAIL-f2.ahk if deepl is the active window, when i scroll the mousewheel up it runs deepl again on field 1 on anki. i made this because sometimes the first script above doesn’t work or rather deepl failed me. open-acitivate-DEEPL.ahk when i press alt + d it brings deepl to the front. also it checks to see if deepl is open; if deepl is not running it opens deepl stardict-front.ahk when i press alt + s it brings stardict to the front. I ‘m gonna change this to the windows key which is # for authotkey sendtostardict.ahk when i press control + alt + s- it sends highlighted text to stardict sendtolingies copies and sends highlighted text to linges. i have this in the startup folder of my windows computer .
vocab-tag-deck-move.ahk search-browse-grammar.ahk grammar-tag-deck-move.ahk these are authotkeys for searching highlighted text in the review window in the anki browser and tagging them. i have to keep the browser maximized because coordinates are involved. i don’t use these scripts much because i have morphman, mass tagger feature of morphman, frequencylist.txt etc etc but it’s definitely useful if you want to see examples of the exact same phrase/sentence pattern. nowadays i do a search with Expression:( *phrase* or *phrase*) with like 30 phrases to do multiple searches at once so I can tag them, move them into a deck and re-sort using the hsk sort plugin so I could see multiple example sentences with the phrase. i only learn from those tagged cards if they also are tagged with 0.5t or 1 t.
recently I even made ahk to send 2 to anki after I press my tag toggler shortcuts so I can spare myself a lotta keystrokes.
So when I first come across my 1T mm_frequency cards my options are to double click or hover over the word and press insert to bring up the lingoes pop-up dictionary, press backspace for the goldendict pop-up dictionary, press LEFT arrow keu to run deepL on the first field, highlight the word then press the shortcut to look up the word on stardict/lingoes, press windows button + c to look up the word/phrase/grammar etc on naver linedict, or press down/page-up/down/end to see the definitions generated by pinyin helper, and to press a tag toggler shortcut and grade the card if i understand the card fine with the english translation and the hanzi. I mostly do deepl/lingoes-pop-up but i definitely use my options. i use the naver linedict the least because usually the other stuff is enough. I also heard of people doing anki reviews on the browser to use zhonwen pop-up dictionary so they can just hover the word but i have too many cards to be uploading it to ankiweb. Also I hate how ankiweb doesn’t automatically play the audio. also i like tagging the new cards during the initial encounter
I’m not gonna write extensively about how to subs2srs mandarin and all that bs but i didn’t just jump into subs2srs decks with my japanese kanji knowledge and trudged on. it’s the opposite. Even if I have a million subs2srs cards and morphman and I am super literate in Japanese I can’t just jump into mandarin on anki because i don’t know any mandarin grammar and i can’t hear mandarin. I was not qualified to learn from subs2srs on anki… like the saying that it’s possible to know all the words in the sentence and not understand the sentence, it is POSSIBLE to know all the characters in the sentence and not understand the sentence. Deepl is my savior lol. Of course deepl fails me at time but it’s still helpful a majority of the time. in my experience korean and japanese are more similar than mandarin/japanese or mandarin/korean so mandarin is hard for me. Anyways, if you can’t hear mandarin even if the sentence on anki is short and audio repeats the audio 20 times, you still can’t hear it! there’s at least 5 sounds that sound exactly the same and the tones are impossible to hear when people speak at natural speed when you’re a complete beginner with virgin ears. so I did some grammar cards, and other wonderful premade cards halfassedly as halfassedly as possible ( set huge intervals, cap the reviews to 0, do it very sporadically and inconsistently. Chinese grammar isn’t rocket science at least for beginner/intermediate stuff so default anki settings aren’t needed… actually they’re never needed. there are more important things in my life not to mention fucking covid) and I listened to condensed audio of code geass (it’s the most fun thing I could think of to listen to in mandarin and C.c.’s voice DOES sound like the japanaese counterpart which is impressive. The French dub doesn’t even try… cc just sounds like some random French woman. Omg I heard some of the mandarin voices for season 2 and the Chinese dub definitely tries to make the voices similar to the Japanese voice actors which is REALLY appreciate.. it was very noticeable with the bald? Chinese character with the unique, annoying voice) and some other crap when I felt like it. Like most good anime, i love the background music and sound effects and it makes condensed audio more entertaining and useful. I didn’t do anything hardcore because there’s no rush. i’m all about the cardinal rules of AJATT which is to have fun and to do SOMETHING than NOTHING. on a random note, I read somewhere on japanese google that japanese literacy gives you 1000 hanzi for free ~
hmm I actually made subs2srs decks that only contain cards that are 2 characters long, 3 chacratser long, 4 charactesr long, etc up to 7 characters . I’ve also tagged cards that are between 6-10 characters long with “ideallength.” this is something that you can only really do with mandarin because they only write in hanzi! those decks are pretty cool and useful since the BEST cards to learn from are SHORT and comprehensible (they usually are since they’re short and i have my english translation and DEEPL). not to mention I ran morphman and suspended comprehension cards, have a frequency.txt ( i paste stuff i collected via gaming mouse + ahk + subs2srs reviews on the top of it) etc so all i get is USEFUL SHORT cards which are extremely desirable characteristics for subs2srs cards. if you don’t run subs2srs you’re gonna get a lotta useless shit like people yelling people’s names or whatever bs phrase or variation of that bs phrase you already know and heard 5 billion times.
useful regex: CHECK off TREAT AS REGULAR EXPRESSION in find and replace window of anki. useful when you have fields that contain mandarin and english and you want to separate the fields.
aka the YG DUNGEON according to kpop fans because YG artists don’t make much music! I think in the first episode YG describes the treasure box and if you replace those words with dungeon, the sentence still makes sense.
So I forgot to post this post. I watched yg treasure box when the eps were coming out one by one and it’s been a long time since then!
here we go:
Only thing I can recommend on v-live (a website) is YG Treasure Box show on VLIVE because I don’t use that site very much. Tactually there’s also produce-x 101 content too. I think it’d be a fantastic resource for beginners and intermediate people since it seems to be full of daily conversation stuff and you have access to Korean subs and English subs and subs in many other languages. They sub all the talking since it’s closed captioning and you can rip the subs and learn from it using sub2srs or workaudiobook or re-listening via files generated by sub2srs etc. Check out this language log for more details on how to use vlive to learn Korean! https://forum.language-learners.org/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=9646 <- link is probably dead
Ondemandkorea.com also has Korean subtitles for some of the content they upload but as far as I know there’s no way to download it. I think it’s stuff they uploaded in 2017 like for sketchbook. For me, I don’t have that many words to learn from korean tv so I don’t have as much of an incentive to download the sub file to learn compared to the me in 2012. This site is a pain with the ads but if you load multiple windows of the same thing you don’t have to watch ads or use ad-block. If you need a recommendation check out the documentaries (don’t think there’s korean close captioning for this one) https://www.ondemandkorea.com/sbs-special-e547.html
So it turns out v-livethe only the place you can watch YG’s boy group survival show. I have a thing with cut-throat survival shows. It is such a blessing that they went that route instead of a TV network for Korean learners. The videos come with subtitles in Korean (legit closed captioning every word that comes out of people’s mouths), Japanese, Chinese, English, and many many more thanks to the billingual k-pop fans out there. So far there isn’t a lot to mine from this show because I’ve seen so many kpop survival shows / other korean shows. I’ve mined more from the first 2 episodes of mix 9 (the closest thing to the PRODUCE show which reminds me the UNIT made me appreciate MNET more because that show was SOO Boring. watched it at 1.5x etc most of the time. i’M STILL glad I watched it though since I got to find out BI/RAIN’s personality/work ethic/style – it was very uncomfortable TV. felt like i got a glimpse of what the mblaq members had to deal with haha ) than this whole show. I think I looked up maybe 5 things and made 2 cards from all the eps?? This show is easy to understand. I love how it’s so easy to mine from it since I have Korean subs and if I really need help or confirmation I can reference the English or Japanese subs. ie download the episode, watch on potplayer, press my shortcut to copy the subtitle on the screen etc etc.
This was one card I made from the show
<-i swear on another korean show i saw them make a pun with oo dang tang but exchanging oo in hangeul to the hanja for cow. it was kinda random but cute.
One of the things I noticed while watching was all the direct word to word translations the Japanese trainees employed in their speaking. It stood out since they “corrected” what they said whenever they put up the korean text (They do this on Japanese TV too since otherwise they’re gonna irresponsibly display incorrect Japanese text on Japanese TV. For Japanese TV they also love playing around with the effects and colors of the text to imbue a certain mood. They can also use KATAKANA against the person! I sometimes wish something like katakana existed for Korean where they distinguish foreign words; even if it’s something as simple as putting dots on top of the hangeul etc. I’m sure I’m not the only one who has wasted time and effort figuring out simple english words/names like Martha or zolpidem (at least put sumeunjeh next to it so i can exert less EFFORT!!!) -r. Now that I think of it don’t they make the font of foreign names in korean books different from the rest of the text?). I was thinking though why do they need to learn Korean since you can make more money in Japan.
I like this Japanese expression a lot. It’s just very satisfying hearing an expression that fits the situation perfectly. I recall wakabayashi from AUDREY (odori… i didn’t know the meaning of their conbi name for years lol. there’s katakana for you) and nicole from KARA using it. So the former was cathartic and funny because it was perfect since he’s fluent in Japanese. The latter was lackluster because of nicole’s pronunciation/intonation/pitch accent of the word. Her usage was correct but the delivery was lacking. so the only thing that came to mind was Nicole is really putting effort into improving her Japanese. Cool… instead of me just enjoying the convo. The mispronunciation stands out that much more when people you use fancy expressions or big/uncommon words etc etc. Though in all seriousness Nicole from KARA improved by leaps and bounds. I think she’s trying to work in Japan ~ happy for her.
few examples:
오디션을 받았다 가수에되고싶다
Well at least korean peeps have no problem understanding what they mean.
Those instances are always amusing to me. I felt worried and bad for the Japanese trainees since they didn’t seem to provide a translator. If they don’t understand what YG says they can’t help it. There was this one scene in ep 3 where YG asks as a yes or no question of “Are the fellow trainees hard to keep in line” (something like that, I’m going off my memory) and the Japanese trainee answered “Yes” and then everyone laughed and it’s either because the answer is funny or the trainee answered the question without understanding it or maybe he misanswered because he was nervous. I could not tell since the answer could be interpreted as funny. I am assuming they understand Korean better than they can speak it.
In episode 2 I was so impressed with the Japanese guy’s English rap because I have realistic, low expectations whenever it involves Japanese people speaking English. I think I was even more impressed with the cute korean kid who rapped.
<-gotta find mine too!!!
<- only in Japan… thank god for amazon.co.jp lolz
<-
초롱이 ★ ごきげんよう 