#But I'm super inspired by the stuff that I've learned about the French translation of Onestar's name

[bonefall]

Wait, who’s onestar’s father in your AU? You said it was Windrunner but I assume that’s incorrect since she’s windclan’s founder and died like a million years ago.

Did you maybe mix up windflight and cloudrunner?

GOD DAMN IT, I meant to say CLOUDRUNNER

Not Windrunner, Onestar was not spat out of the sky in a meteorite like Kal-El. Onekit was the only surviving child of Cloudrunner and Larksplash.

Both of them were very old when they had Onekit. Too old to be having kits safely. Larksplash dies in childbirth with the rest of the stillborn litter and Cloudrunner was distraught. They'd been mates for almost their whole lives, but now, he was left with One Kit.

It's a sad name, but a very meaningful one.

#I could get into my conlang but it's a tangent best saved for later #But I'm super inspired by the stuff that I've learned about the French translation of Onestar's name #It's apparently Lonelystar in that language and I absolutely want that for my conlang #So I'm thinking that Onestar's name in Clanmew is a difficult translation #It directly translates to the number 1 but it's more accurately translated as a whole fraction #No cat is complete without the Clan to serve so whole fractions are associated with loneliness but also significance #Like taking a stand and acting like you alone are a whole clan's worth of cats #So other translations of Onewhisker's name would have been Finalwhisker Fullmoonwhisker Lonelywhisker or Wholewhisker #I plan to really have fun with the fact these cats canonically have fractions #Onewhisker #Onestar #Bonefall Rewrite #Larksplash #Cloudrunner

[bonbonmacaron]

My Language Learning Log

I've been tracking my language learning in Notion since last year and I've finally decided to share my Notion set up! I've been putting it off for so long because I use a lot of colors and abbreviations that only I can understand, so I thought it'd be hard to explain. But I'll try to explain it the best I can.

I color-code all my target languages - Japanese is blue, Chinese is orange and French is green. I also track yoga/biking in purple. On the left, I have my goals for the week and on the right I have the amount of time I want to spend on each language for the week vs. the amount of time actually spent. I break down my time tracked for each category J - Japanese, C - Chinese, F - French, Y - Yoga, R - Reading. I use an app called Focus To-Do to track my time in pomodoros and I get my daily and weekly stats on it. I also don't track time doing Anki and Kanji Garden, since it's just a couple minutes a day or time I spend watching things. I only track proper study time like reading or grammar, etc.

Next I have my habit tracker where I track reading, writing, listening and speaking for each language.

Japanese

I've been reading キッチン by 吉本ばなな since March and I'm 36% through! I'm going slowly because I want to be really thorough since this is my first Japanese book. I basically translate every sentence myself, then compare it with the English translation to make sure I got it right and then I highlight any words and grammar points I didn't know. I also add all unfamiliar words (and I mean all!) to Anki and study them. It's not as bad as it sounds - I'm at about 17 unknown words per page right now and I can get through ~2 pages in a half hour like this. I know this sounds like a long and painstaking process and I wouldn't recommend it, but I'd rather be super thorough now, so I'll have an easier time reading my next book.

I'm also learning N2 kanji with the sou matome N2 kanji book. I just add new kanji to Kanji Garden and study them like that. I also started watching a new anime this week, Clannad, and I really like it so far! I watch it with dual subs on Animelon and sorta read the Japanese and English at the same time. I can't really explain how I do it haha. I always have trouble getting into anime and I only watch it for listening practice to be honest, so I'm glad I finally found something I like.

Chinese

I've been trying to learn traditional characters since I've completely plateaued with Chinese and wanted to learn something new and challenging. So I've been reading transcripts from the Learn Taiwanese Mandarin podcast and studying words I don't know with Anki. I've been studying like a half hour a week these last couple weeks and that's it. So I decided to drop Chinese for now because I feel like I'm spreading myself too thin and I'd rather dedicate more time to it when I have more time.

French

I started my FLE certification course to teach French as a foreign language! I'm so happy since I'm considering teaching French online. It's really interesting and also less time consuming than I expected. It says it takes like 30 minutes per section, but it's just a 5-minute video, slides to review and a short quiz. So it takes me like 15 minutes per section, so I'm not complaining. It's a general overview of basic teaching techniques like communicative and task-based and stuff like that. I'm curious to do the readings to get a better idea. Although next month will be more challenging since I'll have to submit some lesson plans.

I've been feeling really stuck with French since I didn't know how to study it anymore. My level is B2-C1. I watch a lot of French Youtubers, read posts from natives here and constantly immerse myself in it to the point where I think in French half the time. I've completely stopped writing since I'm thinking in it so much, so there's kind of no point anymore. I can't really tell what I need to work on since my listening and reading are 10/10 and my writing and speaking are probably 8/10. I feel like I'm good enough at this point and it's hard to find things to improve, aside from some pesky grammar mistakes, and ways to challenge myself. So I'm glad I started a FLE course. My personal definition of an advanced level is being able to follow a university-level course on a subject taught in the language. It's why I define my Chinese as C1, since I took a few Chinese literature classes for native speakers at uni and did really well in them. Although that's probably not my Chinese level anymore since I graduated a few years ago.

That's the end of my Notion tour! I hope it was useful and not too convoluted haha.

Inspired by @nordic-language-love @linguenuvolose and @mediocrelanguagelearner I'm going to also share my language learning logs every week from now on! I always love reading your updates 💞

#langblr #languages #languagelearning #language resources #notion #planning #language log #french #chinese #japanese