#I might do eng subtitles for the whole thing if I can find a good recording

[la-muerta]

[ENG SUB] Clip from the press con by the "Fangs of Fortune" cast, 6 Nov 2024

Interesting choice to use the term "青梅竹马" which to be fair can be innocent childhood playmates even though the romantic aspect is implied. But it actually means between a boy and girl (青梅 green plum flower = girl, 竹马 hobby horse = boy).

[lenyul]

To Sir, With Love Episode 1: The curse turned your son gay, now what?

In an unexpected turn "To Sir, With Love" actually has English subtitles on the official channel only one week after release. This means I can finally watch it without having to resort to the questionable yellow subtitles hardsubbed over the Vietnamese subtitles, that were the only Eng subs before this. I don't expect this to be very fluffy, or to have a happy ending, but it might make me have feelings, which is currently good enough for me.

It starts off with a Star Wars scrolling intro, which really isn't necessary. Tian's mom could have explained this, and then we could be looking at the meeting (and the pretty dresses). The most important part is that it says the year, so after a bit of googling I know that it's 1931. Or maybe that was the year they formed the 5 Dragons. Well then I learned nothing, so let's get on with it so I can look at pretty dresses.

Okay, that's better, purple sequin dress fills me with joy (unlike scrolling backstories).

I learned so much about the Five Dragons from the intro and Li explaining it to Tian! I sure hope they don't lose a family in the first 20 minutes of runtime! Well, Four Dragons doesn't sound as good, so let's not change the name.

Some guy explains homosexuality and homophobia to the kids, they don't really care and just want to go back to playing.

Jesus Christ, I knew this was probably gonna be tragic, but I didn't expect gay suicide in the first 30 minutes. Well, at least I'm no longer holding onto hope for a happy ending. Everyone is very sad about Zhang, but they don't seem to realise that they could learn something from this.

Li decides the family needs to go out to feel better. I feel like Chinese opera might not be the best thing to take his mind off the whole gay thing, but hey, what do I know, I just have genre awareness and way too much cynicism.

And that brings us to:

Murder attempt 1 (feat. CGI snake) (this show will probably have enough murder attempts that numbering them makes sense) I really thought Chan would try to blame this on the curse (I know I would have). Like if a guy kills himself, for the next couple of weeks you can get away with a lot of shit, as long as you say it was the vengeful spirit, and everyone completely misses this opportunity.

The kids are so adorable, I really hope the rivalry doesn't get to them.

The thing is, neither the scarf nor the hairpin are incriminating, but burning them is really suspicious. If someone (most likely Chan) found them, you could just claim that he was going to gift it to his mom. I get that Li took them away to punish him, but burning them is really suspicious, especially in the middle of the night (yeah, it's probably relatively early in the evening, but still).

I thought they would try to blame Tian liking feminine things on the curse. But then again, that would mean acknowledging it (both the gayness and the very probable vengeful spirit), which they probably want to avoid.

OH NO, THE GIRLS ARE FIGHTING! I honestly really like the moms, even if both of them are terrible people. Li is nicer than I was expecting, but she offsets that with the homophobic abuse. Chan is a mean villain second wife, and she's great at that.

And at the end we time-skip ahead 12 years, this means it's either 1945 or sometime after. The kids are now adults, Tian still likes opera.

Well that's it for episode 1. Next time we meet the love interest, get even more intense about inheritance and I'll probably find more things to blame on the curse.

[beihonglin]

[about subbing.]

alright y’all sit tight and buckle up, i’ve held this in for three months now but today i saw a youtube comment demanding to know why it took so long for eng subs for a certain show to come out and i think some things should be made clear. 

fan subbers are not obligated to do the subbing we do. we are people with our own lives who are busy with work and school and life. the time spent subbing takes away from our study time, our down time, or time better spent doing more productive things. 

“but wait, surely it doesn’t take that long to sub a show? i see gifs on tumblr / translated transcriptions on twitter, so i know people are capable of translating things but nobody will sub the whole episode / it takes so long for eng subs to come out.”

it takes. so. much. time. in case you’re not familiar with the process (i know i wasn’t, before joining a subbing team), i’ll walk you through it with personal examples. 

(1) obtaining the raw video: 

content is often hosted on iqiyi, youku, tencent. unlike youtube, these platforms have little to no ‘fast’ ways to download the videos. for example, iqiyi uploads their episodes as .qsv files, which, due to their non-standard format, cannot be opened in any normal multimedia player and require the use of iqiyi's proprietary software. in order to decode the file and make it usable, downloaders have to find ccodes and ckeys, which takes time. to make it worse, these ccodes and ckeys change every few weeks, which means downloaders have to go on a hunt for them all over again. 

even if you could find an online downloader for videos, video parsers such as this one often give you very little control over the quality of the video - most of the downloads end up looking like someone chewed it up and spit it out. 

this means that whoever obtains the raw video has to use methods like coding or terminal just to get the hd file, which takes time and effort. 

from here, the raw video goes to two people: the transcriber and the timer. 

(2a) transcribing the video:

this is a step i skip when i am subbing alone or when i’m subbing in a team that are all chinese-speakers, but when i’m working in a team that has typesetters who don’t speak chinese, we have to provide a transcription along with our translation so that they can match the words on screen with the translations they put in. in some teams, there are members who only transcribe, but in smaller teams, translators have to do it ourselves.

transcribing takes time - it can take anywhere from half an hour to two hours for a five minute segment, depending on how used you are to typing in that language.

(2b) timing the video:

for me, this is The Most Time Consuming part of subbing - it’s the part i dread when subbing alone. it involves making sure your subs appear at the same time as the corresponding characters on screen, and often, if your subs appear even a couple of frames off, the entire sequence will look strange to the viewer. timing involves small adjustments made over and over again just so your subs look at least presentable. 

it requires precision, which takes time. and it requires practice and being comfortable with the timing software - if you’re starting out with new software, you might take more than two hours to time a five minute segment. 

even worse is when a video comes without chinese subtitles (rip all of us who ever had to sub these) - we don’t have a frame of reference and have to decide how to time by ourselves. we have to take into account sentence length and how fast viewers can read per second, how long a clause can be before viewers forget what was in the previous clause, and we have to make these decisions in tandem with how fast the people on screen are speaking. which takes time.  

(3) translating the video:

i think this step is often what people reduce subbing to and is what most people are familiar with seeing, but i cannot stress this enough - it also takes time.

personally, i take an hour to clear five minutes worth of dialogue on a good day. and then i take additional time for the sfx captions. and then additional time to proof-read and make sure i didn’t mishear, misinterpret or mistranslate things. most of the time, interviews love using internet slang or gaming terms and for those of us who don’t game or spend most of our lives on weibo, it’s an extra step for us to search for the term, understand its meaning and the context in which it’s being used. which takes time.

when a video comes without chinese subtitles and the members on screen happen to Love Screaming Over Each Other... replaying the segment over and over again to try and hear what they’re saying takes time. and patience. and eardrum abilities. 

in a team, it also involves proof-reading each other’s work. our translations team always proof-reads each other’s segments in case we catch something the others missed out on or mistranslated, or in case semantics are awkward and we have to restructure a sentence. i’m very, very lucky in that the subbing team i’m in have different strengths - one of us is better at chinese and explaining complex phrases, one of us is good at pragmatics and catching nuances and suggesting rephrases and one of us is good at semantics and making sure things are grammatically accurate. but sometimes teams are unbalanced and it takes extra effort to make sure things still turn out in the best quality possible. 

in some cases, we can discuss one (1) word choice for a full ten minutes because there simply isn’t a phrase for it in english and we have to t/n it, or because multiple english words map to the same chinese word and choosing the wrong one will provide a wrong connotation. in other cases, we know that some scenes will be talked a lot about or giffed a lot by international fans, and we have to make sure that the translations have to be as accurate and as nuanced as possible so that nothing gets twisted. and in the worse case scenario, a wrong word choice can change a fan’s whole impression of a member. 

(4) typesetting the video: 

for dialogue subtitles, this involves finding a font that is readable by everyone and a style that will be visible against all backgrounds. it involves making sure they stay in the same place and are of the same style (all aligned left, a certain number of pixels from the bottom etc). 

for sfx captions, this involves matching your english font to the chinese font used so the scene style isn’t incongruous and matching styles like outlines and shadows so that the colour scheme remains the same. in some cases, there is no space for the sfx translation, and typesetters have to blank out the original to make the translations visible. in many cases, they move, so typesetters have to animate the text, which takes extra effort. 

for multiple-episode shows, typesetters have to make sure that the styling remains consistent and visible in all settings, which make the thought given to these choices all the more important.

in some teams, typesetters don’t speak chinese, and have to refer to transcriptions and corresponding translations to typeset correctly. this takes time. in the cases where the original video comes without chinese subtitles, typesetters have to decide in which order the noise and mayhem should appear on screen. this takes time. 

and in the first place, this assumes that you have the software to do hard-subs - something not all of us have. 

(5) encoding and posting the video:

this step takes the least effort but it still needs So Much Time - converting the aegisubs or premiere pro file into an .mp4 requires a media encoder, and adobe media encoder more or less takes three hours to encode a three hour episode. sometimes, it exports as an .mov and you have to handbrake it to get it to an .mp4 file, which takes extra time. 

uploading it on youtube also takes time - it takes an hour to get a two-hour video uploaded, and it takes another few hours for it to process so that you can publish it in 1080p. 

some of our laptops don’t have enough processing power to go through a three hour video - even encoding a half-hour episode can slow down our laptops so much they’re pretty much useless until it’s done. some of us even don’t have a media encoder on our laptops and have to run to computer labs to get it encoded. and if the closest one is on campus twenty minutes away and it’s snowing outside? good luck. 

people who gif casually or translate in blocks of text on twitter don’t have to deal with steps (2), (4) and (5), and that’s where the difference lies - even if they’re capable of translating things, the sheer amount of effort and time it takes can deter people from trying. 

in addition, most of the time, the content we sub is copyrighted so we can’t even monetise the eng subs - we get nothing out of subbing. 

the reason why we do it anyway is because we love the show or the people on the show and want to share that with an international audience. we’re fans and for some of us, that’s justification enough to put in the time and effort needed to get more love and attention for our faves. 

and that’s why we appreciate it when people ask us, “hi, would you be interested in subbing this show?” most of these requests are polite and include an “only if you want to” add-on (which frees us from the obligation to agree), and it lets us know that you’re following our faves and lets us know what kind of content you’re interested in. most of the time, most of us don’t even need a ‘thank you’ in the comments (although they are very much appreciated), because if we see comments laughing over a certain member’s actions, it means someone else is loving our faves too and to me, it makes the effort worth it. 

i understand people asking, “why does it take so long to sub?” out of curiosity, because before i joined my subbing teams, i knew nothing about the process. but going, “why is it taking so long to sub?” is different, and demanding that a show be subbed when it takes us ten hours of work to let you enjoy a twenty minute video? that’s not fair. 

tl;dr: don’t underestimate the amount of effort it takes to sub a show. subbers have their own lives and are not obligated to work on your schedule. 

if you’re still thinking about demanding subs faster, consider joining the subs team. otherwise, shut up and enjoy the fact that fans are putting in time and effort for your entertainment for free. 

[shabootyisland]

Howdy! I’m bored and I’m making this post on a whim to help introduce people to the whole Touhou thing! I’m gonna teach y’all a few tips I wish I’d known myself. I’m not qualified to make this post. Anyway!

REASONS TO GET INTO TOUHOU

An almost all-female cast. Seriously, I’d estimate 97-98% female

VERY STRONG FEMALES. Many of them could kill you very easily.

The characters (in-game at least) aren’t sexualised! They just fight each other. And then have parties. Lots of them drink.

The games (the ones that aren’t fighting spin-offs, at least) are all made by one dude who is drunk basically all the time. Art, music, coding, it’s all done by one guy (commonly known as ZUN)

The art’s really charming, even if it isn’t the greatest

The game is really hard but beating it is very rewarding

Lots of great music, and remixes of said music!

You can’t really spoil a Touhou game, and can start pretty much anywhere.

Now, having that said, here’s how to get into Touhou.

METHOD 1: MEMORIES OF PHANTASM

Memories of Phantasm is a fanmade adaptation of the stories of a few Touhou games, though it is not in the order the games were released. Although, that doesn’t really matter too much. Each game basically has its own story, or incident, as they’re often called, that is rectified by the protagonist.

While Memories of Phantasm is officially non-canon, it’s a great way to meet many of the popular characters. Since the characters are spread out through various different games, it can be difficult to get to know some of the more important ones. Most fan favorites make an appearance in some way or another.

This is how I personally got into Touhou! After watching this, I downloaded and played the Touhou games, and was able to recognize some characters

You can watch Memories of Phantasm subtitles on youtube here.

METHOD 2: ACTUALLY PLAYING THE GAMES

So, you’re like, “I heard there’s games, so why bother watching an anime?” And that’s valid.

But there’s one pressing question: Which game should you start with?

Short answer: any of them. The stories aren’t really “connected,” and you won’t really be losing anything by playing a newer game.

If you want something easy, my suggestion is Touhou 8: Imperishable Night.

IN is considered the easiest by most fans. Start off on the easy difficulty. Trust me on this one. Easy is a lie. Touhou difficulties can more accurately be described as:

Easy > Hard

Normal > Really Hard

Hard > Really Goddamn Hard

Lunatic > Absolute Shitfest

(BTW, most ENG fans refer to Touhou games by making an acronym of their English Subtitle. For example, you might see Touhou 7: Perfect Cherry Blossom simply referred to as “PCB”)

If IN ain’t your style, pretty much any Touhou game from 6-12 is probably a good bet.

Avoid Touhou 15. Its difficulty is unspeakable. Do not start with Touhou 15 unless you have a death wish.

You can download English translations of Touhou games from either moriyashrine.org or nicoblog.org. I usually go with the latter because my laptop doesn’t like the Moriya Shrine for whatever reason.

Alternatively, you could just type “touhou (number here) download” and you should be able to find it, though I can’t guarantee you’ll be downloading an English translated version.

If you’d like to support ZUN with real money, you can buy Touhou 16 on steam. It’s very cheap at only $15. The only real downside is that it’s in Japanese, but, since all Touhou games play relatively the same, you should be able to get the hang of it.

(Oh and you can also buy the fighting spinoff Antimony of Common Flowers on Steam it’s $25)

HOW TO PLAY TOUHOU

Here comes the part that I really wish someone had told me about.

Touhou is a danmaku/bullet hell shooting game. Your objective is to shoot down the enemy while managing to avoid the metric fuckton of bullets they’re shooting back at you. Basic controls are as follows:

Z to Shoot/Confirm Menu Selections

X to Bomb/Cancel Menu Selections

SHIFT to Focus

Arrow Keys to Move

ESC to Open the Pause Menu

Shoot at all times. There is no reason to not shoot. Touhou does not have a pacifist mode. Not shooting will only lengthen the time you must suffer.

Bombing is for when you get into a tough situation/a really hard boss. A bomb will do massive damage, and temporarily rid the screen of some/all of the bullets. Additionally, in some games, you can perform a “deathbomb.” By using a bomb right after you get hit, you won’t lose your life. You will, however, use your bomb/lose some power. (Whether you lose a bomb/power depends on what game you’re playing.) Bombs are also known as Spell Cards.

Focusing changes your shot type, and lets you move slower. Many of the bullets are only pixels apart from each other, so you can use it to help you dodge them. Sometimes, slower is better than faster.

Additionally, while focusing, you can see your hitbox. It’s the little circle pictured here:

Since there are so many bullets, it’d be unfair if the whole character sprite was a hitbox. So, hits will not count unless they make direct contact with that circle.

There are a few things you’ll want to collect, or, actually run into when you play a Touhou game. Specifically, these:

The P’s will make your shot stronger once you collect a certain amount of them. In older Touhou games, (6-8) Power could range from about 0-130 (that may not be exact.) In newer Touhou games, power ranges from 0.00-4.00, with a few exceptions depending on the game and shot type you choose.

If you collect enough of the blue thingies, depending on the game, you’ll get another life! You should stock up as many lives as you can, because you will lose them. (In other games, these just add to the score.)

These thingies (sometimes they have a B on them) are bombs! Useful.

In games where those blue thingies don’t get you a one-up, five of these life pieces will.

In newer games, when you start, you’ll see an “Item Border Get Line” message:

If you pass that line, all the P’s and blue thingies onscreen will automatically drift toward you, as if you were a magnet. It’s risky, but useful.

The item get line does exist in other games, it just doesn’t show up as a message.

Graze is when a bomb nearly hits you, but does not, it adds to your score.

Score is kind of like it is when you play Super Mario Brothers. It’s there, but it’s not really a big deal unless you make it one.

Touhou games are played like arcade games. Meaning you can’t save and come back to them later. (Unless you’re playing Touhou 15/Using Steam Cloud.) You’ve gotta do it all in one go. A successfully cleared run only takes about 25 minutes.

You can replay your playthroughs later if you choose to save your replay upon dying/clearing the game. It’s very useful in case you want to like, record it r upload it to youtube.

By the way, you can upload any part of your Touhou LP to Youtube. ZUN won’t copyright you. All he asks is that you don’t post the endings you get upon clearing the game in video form online. Of course, you won’t be punished if you do, but you probably shouldn’t do it outta the kindness of your heart.

Aaand that’s about it! Phew, hopefully that wasn’t too overwhelming. If I forgot somethig or any of this is wrong, let me know! I’ll fix it up right away.

SOME LINKS WORTH CHECKING OUT:

Touhou Wiki

EricVanWilderman’s Let’s Plays (ESOD/PCB) (He explains how the game works as he’s playing, in case you’re more of a visual learner.)

/r/Touhou

Moriya Shrine (it has more than just game downloads! Also I stole like 2 pics from them oopsie)

Touhou Character Introduction Twitter Thread

[sienne-k]

Ok, so I'm not trained in teaching Japanese, so take everything I write with much criticism please.

Personally, I've been learning japanese for many years now. My reading, vocab and kanji recognition got improved by installing rikaichan (on firefox, rikaikun on chrome) and reading fanfics in Japanese on pixiv.net. My listening, by watching anime and listening to audio dramas (at first with eng subtitles, but it still helped). My speaking, by going on a trip to Japan, and working with a Japanese boss for 4 years now. Quite unique circumstances...

If you're wondering about teaching, in small groups it would be great if you can take 15-20 min every lesson and ask the students about their life and opinions, sth that would have them use what they've already learned (if beginning of lesson, practise grammar or vocab from previous lessons, if the end, then add what you've been learning in the current lesson as well). I teach a son and father couple, and they both have computers in front of them, so they can check words in a web dictionary as they speak without asking me. Speaking takes a lot of practise, and at first it may take minutes for the students to come up with an answer - that's fine, just try to encourage them, asking what they want to say if they start getting frustrated, and help along with finding correct vocab or grammar. I find it helps them that I write what they say on my computer (we have a shared screen so they see everything), so if they get lost mid-sentence they can read what they've already come up with and get back on track.

When doing drill exercises make them answer orally instead of writing, and have them answer however they wish - ex. the task is to answer 'does Maria san like cooking?', but they can answer about themselves, preferably more detailed (ex. I like cooking italian but my family doesn't like italian food). At first it may take long for them to even come up with an answer, nevermind saying it in Japanese, but the important thing is that they get used to answering in Japanese from the get go, without translating from their native language. Drill tasks might help with that, as they repeat grammar structures that are being practised at the moment without being too difficult (discussion questions require more thought or more complicated answers, that they might not know the grammar for yet, but with drill exercises they already know how to answer).

For listening, of course it is good to watch anime, dramas, variety, but without subtitles it might be too difficult and discouraging, so i recommend erin.jpf.go.jp. The content is for beginners, and easy to understand. Each lesson has one basic and one advanced video, which you can watch with or without subtitles (you can choose in the upper right corner of the video; there are many languages available, but also subs in kanji, kana or romaji). For each lesson, there is a grammar point on how to say something, which is practised in 'key phrases', there are also 'whats this?' segment (explaining japanese things like chopsticks holder, ear cleaner etc), 'let's see' segment (showing normal japanese life, ex. fashion, transportation, cram school etc.) and 'let's try' segment (foreigners attempt calligraphy, ikebana, opening convenience store onigiri...). It's a really great website for beginners.

For individual kana practise (but you could make it into team or whole group exercise), kana.pro is nice, because you can choose which rows to practise (you can choose all of them).

For beginners vocab quizzes, check digitaldialects.com/Japanese.htm.

Honestly if the students don't revise especially vocab by themselves as well, they won't ever learn, unless they have lessons at least every second or third day. They need to revise, because if they don't learn the vocab passively well enough, they won't be able to use it while speaking and move it to active vocab.

I hope that helps at least a little bit 😊 I'm writing on my phone, so i didn't edit anything, hopefully it's still coherent enough...

sienne-k

Me! I’m not advanced, but i can converse quite well. Around B1-2 level maybe?

splatsandblobs

Well, I started to learn about 9 month ago, does that count?

My primary issue is how to get people on a decent level of fluidity, to be quite clear.

I don’t actually teach Japanese in the narrow sense of the word since I don’t have a curriculum (luxury, tbh), but I my job is essentially to get people to talk or do excercises to improve their Japanese level, and I’m always trying out new stuff. Some of the stuff I’ve tried works very well or works very well for certain levels, and other things are a bit… well. I need some brainstorming what kinds of excercises I want to do next year. I learn relatively quickly through reading, but not everyone is like me, so other learning strategies are a little tricky sometimes to really make them work.

Also online language games that you can do in a group, that’s also an important one.

[rigelmejo]

so how has june been going: i am, as i sort of expected, really busy this month. i have barely done any active study. now, this may change later in the month (as i randomly tend to do).

i have been doing a few things, that i think count for something (at least count for language maintenance maybe?):

i’ve been watching cdramas again. I’m mostly watching with english subs (chinese hard subs but they aren’t always visible). But I am making an effort to hear what I’m listening to, repeat after lines every so often. So I think it might be helping reinforce words I know by focusing on actively noticing them, notice how phrases are structured in conversations, help me practice saying some lines I can already read, and i am picking up a few new words (although considerably less than i would if i was watching only chinese subs). I do think what would help me MOST right now is actually dual-subs with both subs visible - because then i could read the chinese, and just refer to the english for ‘looking up unknown words.’ But most shows don’t have dual hard subs visible like that (or dual soft subs visible). I do think watching with the english subs how I am doing, and paying attention to the audio though, does help reinforce my listening skills of the words I ‘know’ though.

i’ve been watching chinese reaction videos on youtube and bilibil. Not much, but like 5-40 minutes a day. And since I hear both scenes of a chinese show with audio-only, and people reacting with the chinese hard-subs they put on their videos, its a nice bit of listening only practice combined with reading-practice. Most of its words I know, maybe a new word I figure out every few minutes. I think its probably helping with maintenance more than learning anything new. I find the reactions do help me ‘learn more fully’ the shows they’re reacting to, since I see some scenes in shows repeated enough to finally grasp nearly-all of what they said when the first watch through maybe i only grasped 80% (the main points). The reactions are mostly to word of honor lol.

I’ve also been reading/watching a smattering of things in only chinese, but again not in large amounts (maybe 5-20 minutes a day). Nothing long enough to put on my ‘list of chapters read/episodes watched’ per day lol. Just browsing weibo, reading some manhua panels, reading a few pages of some fic, etc. Again I think its helping my ‘retention’ and ‘full understanding,’ more than learning new stuff particularly.

Listening in the background - I WANT to do more. However, I have been doing a Little and that counts for something lol. I have not been counting the amount of background listening I’m doing as its again just been like 20 minutes - 2 hours per day, nothing noticeably large. I listened to a word of honor song on loop so much i can sing half of it as it plays. i have re-listened to some chapters of guardian SO much that i now can follow almost every sentence in some chapters. So these exercises have proved to me: repeated listening DOES improve my comprehension and increases how much I grasp from a material. i’ve listened to a few new-book audio chapters, which again made more sense on repeated listenings. Mainly though - Guardian I’ve been playing both old chapters as re-listening, and some new chapters i haven’t read or listened to before yet. With the new chapters, I find even with background listening (and no prior Listening-Reading etc exposure to them), I can pick up the main idea going on and on re-listens pick up a lot of the details. Which makes me excited! That at least for guardian, I’m getting closer to a point where I could just play the whole audiobook with out reading the whole thing, and listen and enjoy it. I’ve also found the Xiao Mao kids books as audiobooks on ximalaya, and just realized some posters put the actual chapter texts in the ‘descriptions’ so like... I could feasibly do some extensive Listening-Reading with those books on Ximalaya when i have time to look at the screen while listening lol.

Some small repeated-listenings of show scenes. I experimented with using viki Learn Mode to replay some lines over and over until I could hear each word etc. While I’ve only been doing this in small 5-30 minute chunks of time at random, I do think its helped my listening comprehension a little.

Language exchange: not much, but weekly i’ve been talking in chinese a little, and writing in chinese multiple times a week/reading in chinese just messages multiple times a week. its really not much, but i do think the fact i’m doing it regularly is pushing my active vocabulary up a little bit. Lately I’m finding my active vocabulary is either more reliable (can more easily recall words i KNOW), or i’m more easily aware of which words i know but ‘forgot how to recall’ since its suddenly become important. Like I don’t usually think about 住在， 可以，可能，好得， 更开心，很多的 etc except as ‘what they mean’ but since I’m communicating more i’m being more aware of trying to recognize WHEN these are used, when to remember them since I’ll use them, and paying more attention when i watch cdramas/listen to audiobooks about specifically HOW words i know are being used so i will hopefully be more understandable when i use the words. Also i think doing this language exchange more is pushing me to shadow more, since its just vital my mouth practices saying the words right so they come out right when i need them ToT. Not a big thing, because the whole week through i’m probably only spending 1 hour writing/speaking chinese. But its enough time to push me to start trying to ‘remember’ how to use words more/practice being able to recall them when communicating. I realize my skills in this level in many ways are horrifically bad compared to people who take classes and i imagine train their active vocabularies and word usage/grammar production for every test/class discussion/tutor session/exercise and assignment. 

Also did a Touch of shadowing practice with my shadowing apps, but only maybe 2 hours the whole month so far. Still, I think it helps each time.

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*I think what’s been helping most in terms of noticeable Improvements is the listening to audio in the background (which is easy, so I WANT to try to do it more lol). Because just listening to Guardian audiobook chapters (so somewhat-comprehensible input for me), I notice so much increase in comprehension with each listening session. Whereas I think most other things I’m doing lately are just helping me maintain the things I know (even language exchange is just refreshing my active vocab/practice, not really improving it since i need to improve.. a LOT lol ;-;). I do think right now dual-subtitles genuinely might be helpful as a study material (whereas before just-chinese subs had higher payoff since i had to practice comprehending). 

*While comprehending-practice helps me, a lot of the time now i run into the situation where (when watching with chinese only subs): if I watch a show episode twice i will grasp nearly everything (most unknown words i’ll figure out from context). I will usually just be missing a few unknown words per scene (which i won’t need in order to understand the scene good enough). If I watch a show once (like I usually do)? Then I’ll grasp enough to pick up some new words from context and follow most of everything going on. If the show is relatively easy (like Fairyland Lovers or GYADL) then I’ll probably pick up nearly everything in one watch. So like, it gets a bit frustrating to me that I will pick up nearly all words in context EXCEPT a few noticeable ones every couple minutes! Words I can vaguely guess, or don’t need to follow the scene, but would LIKE to specifically know their nuanced meaning. But I’m too lazy to look them up since they aren’t critical words I need to understand. And its because of this situation where dual subtitles would come in handy - I could just quickly glance for the definitions of these ‘non critical’ unknown words and learn them quickly too. And then all the other words I pick up from context, I could glance and double check I’ve grasped them roughly correctly. I generally watch the chinese subs over english now especially when the english subs are wrong/rougher. However, I don’t know if in reality my eyes would just go to the english and therefore dual subs wouldn’t be that useful. So... next time I find a dual sub show, I’ll try and see if its helping me more than chinese-sub-only watching. Or if dual subs dont really help me much. I also notice... I am DEFINITELY at a point where watching shows with NO subs (including no chinese subs) would be useful. Forward Forever or Mystic Nine on youtube might be good to test this - since eng subs can be turned off, but don’t block the chinese subs when they’re turned on so both can be visible at once. 

Summary: I’m not doing much just engaging with chinese as it happens lol. So I don’t know if I’ll study more later in the month. I really want to up my listening practice though! ToT