Saturday, June 14, 2014

Language learning notes

Some time passed since last post and I made good progress since then.

German
The main problem with studying German for me is a lack of motivation: I just don't know what to do with this knowledge. So I'm trying to find something interesting in German. And I remembered that some years ago I have read two books by a German author in Russian translation. They were about the son of famous Captain Nemo. The books fascinated me then, so I decided to read them in German now. I was really surprised to find that the series contain twelve books! So I found them and began reading. I was able to comprehend ~70% of the text, which I suppose is quite good. And as I couldn't find the last book in e-format, I had to use audio book. I was very glad that this German audio book didn't give me much trouble.

So I suppose my German isn't too bad. I'm looking forward for more interesting German books to read.


Japanese
I have read two lengthy visual novels and I can say that they are great for studying Japanese. They provide a variety of terms in different spheres, they show differences is speech used by peoples of various social standings, the speech is voiced and so on.
I was able to learn a lot from them.
Now I'm going to read visual novel "Fate/stay night", they say that it has more text that "The Lord of The Rings". Concidering it's size and the fact, that my job takes a lot of time, I hope to finish it in 1-2 months.
I'm not sure what will be next. Maybe I'll start preparing for JLPT (Japanese-Language Proficiency Test), which takes place twice a year - in December and in July.

Anyway, I realize now that I like studying languages. I suppose I may start learning a new language within a year or two.