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March roundup - Russian

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And as promised in my last post , here's my Russian roundup of March!  (Anki) Russian starter deck ( this one ) By now, I reviewed every card at least once! This deck is a good start. Each card presents a sentence which changes every day (so that you learn the words and not memorize the sentence). If you click on a word, you can check its definition. Plus, some cards contain grammar explanations. However, I noticed that some sentences are confusing. Sometimes because of the lack of context and sometimes because they contain difficult phrases. Even after checking the individual words and the translation of some phrases, it didn’t make sense to me. In cases like this all you can do is to memorize what this combination of words means. Anyways, I'll continue reviewing this deck. (Anki) ru15k ( this one ) I suspended all cards except for the first 1k cards to focus on them first. I'm currently reviewing 10 new cards per day. Maybe a bit low, but my main focus is reading. That&
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February roundup - Russian

Years ago, I started learning Russian. I bought interesting books in Russian and a textbook. But this textbook wasn't really beginner-friendly. In every new lesson, the dialogue contained many new words but only few words from the previous lesson. The author probably wanted the learner to study the whole vocabulary list before going on but I didn't like this approach. After a few lessons I felt too overwhelmed and decided to focus on Japanese instead. On February 13th, I tried it again and now I'm much more optimistic. I gained more experience as a language learner through Japanese and can use that now with Russian. Plus, I discovered the Refold Russian server on discord which is a very helpful place for finding resources and guidance.  I want to reach a point at where I can understand the novels in Russian that are waiting on my shelf. In this post I want to share what I did, which resources I used and my thoughts. I think I'll post one update every month. (YouTube) Co
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I finished 『ひと』!

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  Now that I've read the last chapter of 『ひと』I want to share my thoughts: Story I have mixed feelings. Slice of life stories are nice and relaxing to read from time to time but, unfortunately, I struggled to motivate myself to continue reading. I can see the value of this kind of story, however,  I missed interesting twists, unusual events, challenges that the main character needs to overcome, etc. (=anything that would make me curious) To be fair, it's not that the main character doesn't has any goals nor problems, far from it. But they are so … normal. I usually prefer interesting and exciting stories. Mystery, action, suspense, thriller... you name it. That's why slice of life is a bit boring for my taste. However, this is just my personal taste and has nothing to do with the quality of the book itself! Although it was not a page turner for me, it's not that I dislike the story. I think it's a nice slice of life story.  The first chapter introduces the protag
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ヒカルの碁 volume 1

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  I finished volume 1 of ヒカルの碁！A long time ago, I've read the first 4 or 5 volumes in German. I was fascinated by the story and the board game Go. (I even bought a Go set and played a bit) Somehow I never bought the other volumes … which I later regretted… T^T Now, many years later, reading this manga in Japanese is a very special experience to me. (Very light) spoiler warning: In the following, I want to highlight some aspects of the story and characters. I tried to be as vague as possible to avoid clear spoilers. I didn’t describe specific events but just in case you definitely don’t want to know anything before you read the manga yourself you probably should not read the following text. The manga is quite old, but the drawings are still excellent in my opinion. I like, how the main character Hikaru slowly changes his opinion about the board game Go (it's usually not very popular among young people; or at least not among Hikaru's peers). In the beginning, he is a bit arro
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My first impressions of『ひと』

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  I've read the first chapter and would like to share a few thoughts in this post. The first chapter introduces the protagonist, his difficult life situation, his past and several other characters. Apart from that, there are no special or dramatic events in this chapter. At this point, I'm not sure what this story is about or what to expect. I think this will change with the next chapter. I like how the story is told. It starts with the focus on the protagonist and introduces gradually more and more details about the protagonist and other characters in a natural way. It’s quite pleasant to read so far. Although nothing special happened during this chapter, I never felt bored. It's interesting to learn more and more about the protagonist and I'm curious how his life will change in the next chapters.  The level of difficulty is okay. I have to look up a bunch of words and don't understand every detail but most of the time I can follow the story well. Only scenes with
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Talent & Language Learning

What do you think when you hear the word "talent“? Do you think talent in language learning exists and — if yes — that it makes a great difference? While I think that some people are able to learn pronunciation and other things more easily than others, for example, I don’t think that "talent“ is the only explanation to this. There are so many other factors that can influence someone's progress, but these are easily overlooked. That’s why I don’t like it when someone is called "talented“ just because he or she is good at something. That’s not the whole story. Why believing in talent can be problematic Another reason why I’m careful when it comes to "talent“ is that it makes many people think that if they don’t have this talent, they should give up. Believing in talent can destroy your motivation and joy to learn a new skill. When you feel stuck or when you made a mistake it’s easy to think "This is because I have no talent. I will never learn this language“
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Language Learning is Colorful

In nature things are often influenced by more than just one factor. A flower needs more than just water to stay alive. It may grow well in one place but withers when you plant it at another place. There are many factors that determine the development of a living being. Our world is not only black or white. It's full of colors.  Unfortunately, humans tend to think in black or white. "Y is good, Z is bad!" People often discuss which opinion is "right" and which is "wrong". In some cases, friends became enemies because they couldn't accept another opinion.  Many people also confuse opinions with facts. They defend their opinion even if they have no proof. And they refuse to change their opinion even if there is evidence that their claims are not correct. Language learning is colorful I don't like "black-or-white-thinking". And I'm not interested in "language gurus". The language learning community is full of many different
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