July Week Uno! What Do Y’all Think Of This Spread?

new list of video essays i adore <3

her: longing to connect in the 21st century

the intimacy of everyday objects

the soul of a library

the green knight and david lowery's unique obsession with myth

minari: the beautiful tragedy

hayao miyazaki | the mind of a master

andrei tarkovsky - poetic harmony

the visual architecture of parasite

the most disturbing painting

in the mood for love: frames within frames

interstellar - humanity, love & fate

the magical realism genre in movies

entropy in storytelling

may 21, 2019 / some messy class notes + doodles for you guys. just wanted to show how my in class notebook looks like

july 19, 2019 - 왜 그래?

a journal entry in which i rambled about how i’d like to see myself in the future + some recent korean review notes!

also, thank you for 24k!! 24 karat magic in the aaaiiirrr~ your love and support truly mean a lot to me, and i hope i can continue to be a source of motivation and inspiration for you all!

studygram: gloomium

currently listening to: “time of our life” - day6

hello! i'm only starting to learn japanese and i'm finding it hard to know where i should start with the kanji. do you really have to learn kanji separately and memorize both their pronunciations or can you just learn the kanji in the vocabulary?

omg no! don’t stress yourself out like that anon!!

okay, i’m going to be real with the japanese language learning community: you all are doing waaaaaaaay too much when it comes to kanji.

there. i said it.

learning kanji does not have to be a headache!

i spent the first 6 months of my japanese learning “career” (for lack of a better word) trying to figure out the best way to learn kanji because every website and book was like “here’s the kunyomi, here’s the onyomi, now learn them both” but the fine print of that learning method says “you’re going to f*cking struggle”

but then i started realizing that kanji i read all of the time, i didn’t even “properly” study like those articles said. i didn’t know the kunyomi and onyomi for 行 for ages, but i knew it was read いく in 行く and こう in words like 旅行 and 直行. because i learned those words in context and on their own.

a few months after i came to japan, i started asking japanese people how they learned kanji and every single one of them answered the same way: they learn through vocabulary. i once asked my boyfriend how he learned kanji in grade school, and he said that they were basically given a kanji, and then they were given a list of vocabulary that included that kanji. they then memorized the vocabulary and grew to know the kunyomi and onyomi readings.

which, spoiler: kunyomi and onyomi is not always an accurate measure. lots of compounds use the kunyomi, some of them add dakuten (as in ちゅうごく instead of ちゅうこく in 中国), and others add っ (as in ちょっこう instead of ちょこう in 直行). this really isn’t something you can just magically guess.

but it’s important to remember that everyone learns differently. i don’t learn individual kanji – i learn kanji within various vocabulary words. i make sure to get as much exposure to the various ways a single kanji can appear within a larger compound, so 高 is not just a single kanji, but it is 高い and 高校生 and 高価.

i do, however, think it’s important to understand the meaning of a kanji. this can help you decipher the meaning of a word you don’t know yet. for example, 高価 (こうか) means “high price.” 高 means high and 価 means price. knowing their meaning individually can help decipher the meaning.

in this way you can argue that yes, knowing the individual readings of these two kanji makes guessing the reading of this word easier, but 価 can also be read “ke"! you can’t guarantee an accurate reading all of the time, but with more and more exposure to individual kanji, you will be able to tell.

which brings me to my main point: learning kanji is an individual experience. i, personally, think that learning onyomi and kunyomi readings for 2,000+ jouyou kanji is a HUGE WASTE OF TIME, but there are a lot of people out there that do this methodically and know lots and lots of kanji and vocabulary. i, personally, need kanji in a larger vocabulary word in order for it to stick, and my brain just catalogues the various readings away. that’s how my brain works and learns, but it’s not how everyone else works and learns. 

it’s important to find what works for you.

that being said, if you’re just starting out i highly recommend Jakka. it’s a website meant for japanese grade school teachers and has tons of grade school kanji material broken up into their appropriate grades. japanese school children are expected to learn and master a certain amount of kanji + vocabulary each grade level, so if you’d really like to learn like a child, learn like the school children do! (the website is in japanese but fairly simple to navigate.)

i hope this helps a little anon! and remember that learning kanji isn’t a race. if it takes you awhile to learn them, don’t worry. everyone learns languages differently.

28.06.20 ~ a few notes from my psych classes. It’s been so hard to focus these days! I’ve been binge watching Anne with an e and Dark. Fortunately this week i have a break from uni and I plan on rest ✨

Go take a look on my studygram if you want more digital notes inspiration 💕

051320 | seoul day two log!

instagram: ys6bela

graduation is just around the corner for me! equally nervous and excited! 

let the nclex studying begin :-)

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What books did you use to help you learn japanese (grammar&vocabulary)? Can you recommend me anything?(I’m at a beginner level)

I actually use more websites than books, but the main books I’ve used are the grammar dictionaries that are kind of famous (or so it seems).

There are three of them (each about $40-50 each):

A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar

A Dictionary of Intermediate Japanese Grammar

A Dictionary of Advanced Japanese Grammar

These books are amazing. Basic is enough to get you at least to N4 and a little into N3 level grammar, while Advanced is N1 and highly complex stuff. 

I really regret not buying Intermediate and Advanced when I was in Japan because the entire Basic book is all review for me, and I should’ve bought Intermediate at least so I could practice more. Cryingggg.

If you can, try to buy these in Japan! They’re a lot cheaper. Only around ¥3000 per book or something like that?

Heyy guys! I found this really cool youtuber who does japanese language videos. They are super helpful when it comes to grammar, kana, and kanji. His channel is “gaijinquest”