Update: Korean and Japanese Study

So what have I been up to? Well for this month I’ve been doing NaNoWriMo.. But for studying…

Currently I’m working through the beginner Korean Grammar In Use book for review before I go on to the intermediate one. I’m also slowly starting to get into reading some webtoons with Naver’s webtoon app. I also have their web novel app as well, but I’m not confident enough to start reading those yet. I still struggle through news articles. I still haven’t finished Intermediate College Korean..

I’ve also been watching video’s on V-App and V-live from my favorite idols. It’s always so surprising when I can understand a lot of what I’m hearing especially when sometimes there aren’t any subtitles yet. It’s nice realizing how much I’ve progressed. My speaking is still pretty bad though.

I’ve also finally gotten started on Japanese study. So far, I’m finding it much more difficult than Korean but it’s okay. I can do this. I’m using Japanesepod101 since I have a subscription and my library has Pimsleur Japanese so I’m going through that as well. I was using my Japanese for Everyone textbook but even though I like it, I get confused in quite a few places so I’m going back to Minna no Nihongo and I’ll try to pace myself better as I work through it this time around. As far as Kanji, I’ve learned around 100 of them so far. I’m using Kanji Look and Learn for now, but I don’t know if I’ll change to the kanji book Minna no Nihongo has or not…

So I’m doing pretty well on my language studies. I actually need to stop reading language forums and blogs because it’s been making me really want to learn French again right now. I don’t have time to learn 3 languages at once.

I realize I should be learning Japanese

So my family is moving in about to weeks to the other side of the state and we’ve been working on getting everything packed up. As I was packing away all of my things I came to a realization. I have a lot of Japanese material.

Going though all of my belongings, I discovered 6 Japanese novels (I think they were given to me), a small box of manga (in Japanese) and a fairly large box of Japanese magazines. To be honest, since they are anime magazines, I’ve only ever looked at the pictures and never thought of them as a studying tool until now. I’ve also ignored the obvious paragraphs of word in favor of the pretty artwork. I also have quite a few CDs and some games in Japanese as well. I also found my textbooks and dictionaries from when I took my Japanese class a few years ago.

I also follow blogs of Japanese actors that I like and frequent more than a few Japanese websites

So all in all, I’m much more equipped to learn Japanese than I am Korean. And it’s more convenient. It’s something I’ve wanted for years and I also feel a lot more confident when it comes to learning Japanese. I don’t know why I didn’t just start with it instead. Maybe because I wanted to try something new?

That’s not to say that I will give up on or stop learning Korean. I won’t. I enjoy learning the language and don’t want my progress to go to waste. I’ll probably just learn them at the same time, though I’ll put more of a focus on Japanese.