☆❀☆

starandrea has posted a review of Chinese language learning apps. I found it pretty thorough, and interesting - I like seeing comparisons like this.

She reviews five different applications that she's using for Mandarin: Hello Chinese, Mondly, Duolingo, ChineseSkill, and Memrise. The reviews include details about the level of gamification, engagement, what you get for free vs paid, and so on.

This user is very interested in the game aspect of these. From the reviews, you can get an idea of which ones are more gamified vs which provide more rigorous study (to the extent you can get that with gamified mobile applications, anyway). The quick tl;dr overview at the end about what each application is good for is also helpful.

I'm not planning on learning Mandarin right now; I have my hands full with Norwegian. But it's nice to know that if I did decide to pick it up and wanted to use an application in addition to books, there are several options. ;) (Maybe if I had unlimited time and energy I would give it a try, hahaha.)

I think some of you are learning Mandarin or have some interest in doing so - maybe this'll be helpful? <3

☆ I. AM. TIRED. ... Which means hopefully going to bed early, but we will see.

☆ Work was a clusterfuck today. Things that I did not need: coming in at ridiculous-in-the-morning only to find that our internet was knocked out during the weekend and that we all need to go into town to work. I hate working from the town office. :T And the day just draaaaags....

☆ The USD-CAD exchange rate hurts my soul.

☆ ...I kind of feel bad for buying a book for myself this close to Christmas, but, Rabbit mentioned that the book of traditional Finnish spells that I'd been drooling over happens to have an English translation published and I... just... had to have it. Apparently these days I am weak to Finnish folklore. Blame SSSS, honestly.

☆ The box that Mélusine sent me arrived today!! HOORAY! But I'm not going to open it until she receives the one I sent her. At least, I think. I don't actually know when she will get it. Canada Post was kind of iffy on the matter. [/shakesfish] WELL if she says I can open it... maybe I'll open it. Or maybe I'll wait until Christmas. It isn't that far away. Actually - holy shit, it's next week. Where did December go?!

☆ Flip-flopping on whether I should post my Ex Machina poetry to Ao3 (can't remember if I posted about this before, hm). There is one left to revise, so that's three total after it's done, and it could all go into one post as chapters. On the one hand: Tiny fandom, and people might be happy that there's just, like, anything at all. On the other hand: MAN, some people in fandom are downright nasty about fanpoetry even existing at all, and I have a delicate heart, u kno. ...Ugh, maybe I should just keep it to my DW archive.

☆ Language futzing. Trying to think of how to arrange it so that I can try French without losing track of Norwegian. Possibly working on it on alternating days - Norwegian on Monday and Wednesday, French on Tuesday and Thursday, and then on the other days whichever I feel like, something like that... but speaking practically, I can't imagine having the stamina to keep that up for more than a month. :T ...Hmmm. Need to think about this a bit more.

It was terribly cold today. Needless to say, I'm not pleased about that. It's too early to be wearing fingerless gloves in the workplace. But this weekend is supposed to have sun, or at least an absence of rain, and that sounds promising. I'll go out and enjoy what I have left of the summer - and hopefully take a few photos; I started that last week but didn't manage to finish. And I think I'll grab some cake when I go to get my coffee, because I've been craving cake all week for some odd reason. Not sweets in general, but just cake. Coffee cake in particular. With cinnamon.

Things to do this weekend: Norwegian! Hopefully get that letter to my penpal done, or at least started. I've been struggling with Norsk lately, probably because my mind has been on other things, but hopefully if I sit down and just work steadily for an hour or two, it should all come back. I'll take my work down to the cafe if necessary. That's the problem, really - I work best when I'm not in my bedroom, but I can't work at the kitchen table when my parents are home; they're too distracting. So... Starbucks it is, then.

This applies to fic too, of course, not just studying, but it's a frustrating situation overall. Ah, I should probably do some reading from my grammar book as well, now that this is on my mind. I feel like I keep forgetting basic things. There are some simple, standard things that I should have had solid by now, but I just... don't. But I remember having this problem with French, too, I'm not sure why. Norwegian isn't even that complicated a language compared to some others; I don't know why I struggle this much. Gods forbid I ever try to actually learn Polish....

Also to do this weekend: fic! I have two A Redtail's Dream stories that I want to work on; one is nearly done, just needs an extension of the current scene and a proper ending. Probably won't take me more than a page or two. The other one... needs more work. It was originally supposed to be NSFW, but I'm having such a difficult time with it that I'm honestly tempted to cut off where it starts to turn sketch, save that part to be written separately later (if ever), and just take what I have and write it as subtext-filled gen. Or something. I still have no idea what I'm going to do with either of them once I'm finished. On the one hand, the thought of uploading to Ao3 gives me hives (as always). On the other, the fic side of the fandom is teeny-tiny, and maybe if I upload more, then others might be tempted to write as well -- [/puts hands on face] Oh, I don't know.

Speaking of fic, I've started to go through what's up for Stand Still, Stay Silent on Ao3. I'm through about 1/3rd of it - well, only the complete stories so far, and minus the few setting-change AUs - and... honestly, I can't remember the last time I had so much fun reading fanfiction. This past Yuletide, probably. Sure, the quality can vary, but there are lots of bite-sized goodies, and some stories with neat worldbuilding, and some others with very cute character interaction, and I haven't even read most of the stories over 1k yet. I'm having a good time.

✿ This weekend was all right, but not what I would usually prefer. Rain kept me home on Saturday, and smoke kept me home on Sunday. The forest fire smoke wasn't as bad as it was around the beginning of the month, but we're still getting a lot blowing in from the north of the province and east. The fire problem is province-wide, but in Saskatchewan it's even worse, and over 4750km has burned so far. The Red Cross hasn't put out an official call for donations at this time, but 13,000 evacuees - that's a pretty damn big number for them to deal with.

✿ ... As for myself, my area is unaffected at this time, aside from the smoke that I mentioned before. It's not so bad if you stay inside, but that sure is a bummer. And while I'm healthy, not everyone is, and this stuff could affect some other people pretty badly.

✿ Wow, I totally did not intend to start this entry off on a downer note. I guess this stuff has just been on my mind a lot lately.

✿ Anyway! In completely unrelated news, I have an account on Duolingo, username is yuuago as always. If any of you want to add me there, go ahead. Right now I'm only working on Norwegian, though I might pick up another language eventually (though I'm not sure what). I've been going through the lessons very slowly; I don't want to run out of them. And taking in too much all at once tends to be a little overwhelming and I usually forget things easily when I do that. Anyway, so far it seems to be pretty useful for drills, though I don't know how useful it will be for anything else. The upside is that it gets me in the mood to work on Norwegian, and that's the important part.

Today has been nice and productive. Yay!

☆ Worked on some driving today. Mum says I'm coming along rather well. That's good. But I do need more practice - especially the bane of my existence: Left turns at busy intersections where the lights don't have a left-advance. So much hate, ugh. But, I can work on that.

☆ I went for a run and I feel good. Yay! Leading up to it, I always feel like "Ugh, I don't want to do this". And even after it, I usually feel like "Ugh, I wanted to use that time for something else". ... But, it still feels good, so.

☆ Worked on some Norwegian today. I've been neglecting it for weeks. My grammar skills were nothing impressive before. Now they have seriously deteriorated. BUT... well, I'll take it one sentence at a time. Still going to be a while before this letter is finished - I love writing to my study partner, because she's so fun to talk to, but the downside of it is that the replies don't come quickly because 1. it's in Norwegian and 2. I get so chatty and the letters keep getting longer... whoops.

☆ Work is going well. I'm keeping up with things. Not sure what the state of the backlog will be before I leave, but I have a couple of weeks to put it all together. Concentration has been smooth sailing because I realized earlier this week that I have a ton of episodes of News From Lake Wobegon to catch up on, as I haven't listened to it in months, so I've been going through that. It's nice. There are a lot of things about those stories that I identify with - the people in that small town remind me a lot of my mother's side of the family. So, it's comforting. And sometimes a little painful when it hits close to home, but that can be good too. And there's such a comfortable atmosphere about it, the sort of atmosphere that I try to channel in my writing a lot of the time, so it's nice to get that from a different source than what I would usually turn to.

☆ Going to have to start working in the garden on the weekends, I think. I don't particularly want to - I actually don't enjoy it very much, and there are usually other things that I'd rather be doing - but mum has started putting things together, now that we probably won't get any more nights below 0C (probably). So, I should do some of it so that she doesn't have to. But I'll have to take a look - it's a big job because our garden is huge, but she's very particular about Things Getting Done Right, but of course if you offer help she'll refuse it, and she won't very well tell you what needs to be done if you ask what needs to be done, so. Uh. I guess I'll have to figure it out somehow.

Received a letter from my study partner. Yay!

...Today is one of those days where Norwegian looks like complete gobbledigook to me, and I can't read a word of it. Not-yay.

Some day I'll be good enough with this language to read it after a full day's work. Some day.

I've had kind of an itch to pick up another language again. French, or Spanish, or Czech, or German. But any of those would be a terrible idea. Maybe French less so, since I already have a book for it and it would be more of a refresher, but I already mix it up with Norwegian, and that would just make it worse. And Czech would be absolute crazytalk (though it sounds so cool!) and if I were to go Slavic, then it'd be Polish that I should learn, because then I would be able to practice it by writing to my dear Tik. But, anyway. I have no intentions of actually picking up a new one - I just want to.

Update on Age of Ultron plans: There is an 11:30 showing on Saturday. PERFECT. I love very early showings. Popcorn for lunch, how wonderful. So, I'll probably see this on Saturday... unless I have one of those times when I wake up and decide that I'd really rather not have anything to do with the world, thank you very much. It happens, sometimes. Anyway, this is good! Films like this are best seen in cinema, I think, otherwise it's just not quite as much fun.

Read more of Pat Cadigan's Fools today. So far, I'm enjoying it, but not as much as I enjoyed Mindplayers. The first part of the novel is really, really weird, and I had a hard time processing what was going on. I've heard that this is relatively normal for Cadigan's stuff, but it was still a bit weirder than I expected. Plus, I don't quite enjoy the central character(s) as much as I enjoyed Deadpan Allie in Mindplayers.

The novel does take place in the same universe as Mindplayers, though, which was nice (and there were some references to events that happened in that novel, which I appreciated). As with Mindplayers, in Fools there is a lot of weird body horror stuff involving eyes, so if you're squicked by that, uh, skip it.

My efforts with Norwegian have been going really well lately, and I'm so glad. When I started exchanging messages på norsk back and forth with another learner, I thought that it'd fizzle out after a while, but so far it's going really well. It's kind of a relief, actually.

I think I will have to scale back a little before my messages start getting too long, though... My problem is that I'm just really wordy no matter what languages I'm writing in, and I talk too much and if it isn't in a language that neither me nor my partner are fluent in then it can get pretty tedious and difficult to reply to, haha.

But still, it's really - satisfying, that's what it is, that it's starting to get easier. And that I can more confidently write things in it. I still need to check my dictionary a lot, because there are so many words that I don't know, and I need to study the grammar more (and seriously, rather than flipping through to check something because I need it Right This Minute) but it's getting... easier. I'm remembering more words and growing more confident in it.

Though of course, er, I'm probably also learning lots of mistakes, and we're probably learning mistakes from each other, and I'm probably going to have to un-learn a lot of things. But that's okay, because at this point it's a matter of growing confident enough to use the language, and hopefully eventually (or soon?) I'll be confident enough to talk to my actual Norwegian friends in their own language. That'll be cool. (And embarrassing, because of mistakes and me having to respond slowly. But still cool.)

I think part of the thing is - I'm allowing myself to make mistakes, and allowing myself to do something badly. There's baggage to go with this, and it's always hard. The fact that I can do this is a good sign, not just for me and Norwegian, but also in general. Feels good!

"Grammar is a dish best served having carefully read the instructions over and over until you know them by heart."

^Wald said this a week or two ago when we were talking, and I decided that I wanted to save it for reference. Since it's true.

But argh, languages. I have been neglecting Norwegian so badly over the last couple of months, ever since I came back from Europe really, and I really should not be doing that. For a while I was going pretty well with it, but then things just started to slide. Happens every time.

Maybe if I took a grammar-first approach, maybe that would work. It's something I haven't tried yet, at least. And I do have a pretty good grammar book, so maybe I could make some progress that way.

I also need to find something easy to read. I have those parallel-text editions of Hauge, but it's entirely not the kind of thing that a beginner like me should be reading. Anything in Nynorsk is just a terrible idea. Bokmål is what I should be learning. (Why the hell did I decide to learn the Scandinavian language with two writing systems?! Times like this I find myself thinking maybe I should have decided on Swedish instead....)

One thing that I know for sure, though, is that this would be a hellofalot easier if my family didn't discourage me from learning it. Or any language, really.

Managed to get some significant work done on a scene that was giving me trouble, so I'm really pleased about that. I feel like this thing has been going so slowly; it's partly because I haven't had a lot of time for working on it, though. But I really should put more effort into that. I think I could find more time for it if I tried.

I've started a daily diary for working on Norwegian... well, I probably won't get to it every day in practice, but I'm going to try for that, anyway. The goal is just to push myself to write one or two sentences in Norwegian every day. (Or every second day. Or...) Because honestly, I won't learn more vocabulary if I don't use it, and I won't properly learn things like tenses if I don't make myself do it. And then I can put the new words into the Anki deck that I've started.

It's just, a few days ago, I managed to have an entire conversation in Norwegian. And while my Norsk is pretty bad (that Norwayanon must have had so much patience) it was really fun and... I found myself frustrated by my frustration, because there were so many things that I wanted to say, but I wasn't able to do it, and the things that I did say weren't said properly. So I need to work on this.

Ugh, I have so many tiny little things that I need to take care of for my trip. Need to clean my room. Need to pack. Need to find that thing, y'know, that thing I need... bluh. In some ways, I'm very ready to go, but there's all this STUFF I need to take care of and I just don't want to deal with it.

It snowed so much last night that I could barely open the door. I took one look at the driveway, and the snow that was heaped up so high that it was practically over the top of my boots, and considered just saying "fuck it" and staying home. It would've been nice to just curl up under some blankets with some coffee and watch Star Trek all day, or something.

Ended up going to work in the end, though. Better that than have to explain to my mum "The weather is shit so I decided not to go in". Besides, money is nice.

Been trying to find a way to incorporate studying Norwegian more into my day, because I've been neglecting it so badly. Listening to my audiofiles while I do my nightly run seems to work, though by that time of day I'm so exhausted that I question whether I'm actually absorbing anything. Not to mention that it doesn't help the fact that I currently can't read or write it, ah. But on the other hand, I'm not serious about this, and something is better than nothing.

I was going to go on a big tl;dr about how it's difficult to learn anything, and with languages I find it especially disheartening because everyone seems to take the matter very seriously, whereas I just want to go about it slowly and take tiny steps, but - well, I thin I've talked about that enough times.

But anyway, combining it with my nightly walk sounds good. I'm trying to do that thing where you keep track of how far you walk, and try to keep at it enough that eventually you walk the same distance as it would take to get from the Shire to Mount Doom. So far I'm... uh. 0.03% of the way to Rivendell. [/facepalm] But hopefully I'll keep at it. :D

Must admit, seeing The Hobbit at new year's made me want to re-read the book. And... maybe try to read Lord of the Rings again. I tried it once years ago, but I got bored halfway through the second book and didn't bother to try again.