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So I recently joined italki, a language exchange site that so far I am really enjoying. It has basically all of the get-your-writing-corrected-by-native-speakers features that Lang-8 does, plus a bunch of other features geared towards helping you find language exchange partners that you can communicate with via chat or messages or Skype. Not that long ago I would've been weirded out by the idea of Skyping with random strangers but now it seems like a completely logical thing to do when you have no one to practice with offline. I've been taking Japanese classes online for very nearly a year now and I feel it has really opened up my mind to the possibilities of online learning. Perhaps a weird thing to say when I have spent way too much time online every day since I was like eleven.
In any event, the reason I am posting is that I just finished a half-hour Spanish chat with someone from italki, and holy guacamole. My Spanish is terrible. Like, I know that I've been focusing on Japanese for two years. I knew it wouldn't be great. I knew that my brain would go "Oh, we're speaking a language that isn't English? It must be Japanese! Here's the word you want in Japanese!!" and I would have to translate from Japanese into English into Spanish, but even accounting for that! It's TERRIBLE!!!! Clearly listening to a couple Spanish podcasts every weekend for a month did basically nothing hahaha. Seriously.
Anyway so now of course I am panicking that after I've been home for a while my Japanese is going to become this terrible, too. I seriously cannot let that happen.
... This experience is making me feel really really happy with my current level of Japanese. Which is kind of nice since I spent most of the past week beating myself up about it.
Man in other news did I ever tell you guys about that time at the board that me and M were speaking in Spanish just 'cause ...
(this was a while ago so my Spanish was not quite so disgustingly terrible)
... and M's Spanish sentences kept coming out in Japanese word order?
It was the most adorable.
In any event, the reason I am posting is that I just finished a half-hour Spanish chat with someone from italki, and holy guacamole. My Spanish is terrible. Like, I know that I've been focusing on Japanese for two years. I knew it wouldn't be great. I knew that my brain would go "Oh, we're speaking a language that isn't English? It must be Japanese! Here's the word you want in Japanese!!" and I would have to translate from Japanese into English into Spanish, but even accounting for that! It's TERRIBLE!!!! Clearly listening to a couple Spanish podcasts every weekend for a month did basically nothing hahaha. Seriously.
Anyway so now of course I am panicking that after I've been home for a while my Japanese is going to become this terrible, too. I seriously cannot let that happen.
... This experience is making me feel really really happy with my current level of Japanese. Which is kind of nice since I spent most of the past week beating myself up about it.
Man in other news did I ever tell you guys about that time at the board that me and M were speaking in Spanish just 'cause ...
(this was a while ago so my Spanish was not quite so disgustingly terrible)
... and M's Spanish sentences kept coming out in Japanese word order?
It was the most adorable.