Previous years:
2022
2023
2024

Wow, we're at 4 years of me doing these language learning posts. 5 years is gonna feel really nice to hit lol As always, I hope you all get something out of this, whether for entertainment value or to help inform your own language learning techniques. This year feels in some ways like a major turning point for some languages if I follow through. Same as last year, I didn't have any concrete goals for this year, so it will again be one section per language with no subsections. This will mostly be the same for next year, except with a few abstract goals. Also same as last year, I won't show any pictures for my grammar flashcard decks since I still didn't do much grammar study. Let's begin!

Japanese



Contrary to last year, this was actually a pretty big year for my Japanese study. I read a lot, I watched a lot, I started writing again, and most importantly, I started practicing speaking Japanese! A little late considering I've been studying Japanese for over a decade at this point, but better late than never… Let's go through each one by one.

A few years ago I had a goal of reading 6 books in Japanese, I never achieved it, but this year I read 7! I read them in this order (Note: page counts are from bookmeter, but since I read digitally I don't know how accurate they are): 三毛猫ホームズの推理 (368 pages), 三毛猫ホームズの追跡(352 pages), 蒲団 (82 pages), 完璧じゃない、あたしたち(350 pages), Wの悲劇(389 pages), ファザーファッカー(221 pages), and CLIP STUDIO PAINT PRO 公式ガイドブック 改訂3版(192 pages). So some mystery novels, a historically important piece of literature, an anthology book, a semi-autobiography, and what is essentially a manual/tutorial book. I didn't read much history or literary criticism like last year, but I guess it's good to have variety. Despite being the shortest, Futon was the hardest for me to read, mostly due to its age and that I didn't like it lol It was very much an "eating your vegetables" book, at least I read it in one sitting. Otherwise, everything else was about the same in terms of difficulty for me. Taking notes really helped with following the mystery novels, not much with the other books. Also Jirō Akagawa at this point is the author I've read the most in Japanese, entirely due to the fact that I read them as prerequisites to playing their adventure game/sound novel adaptations. There's a couple books I'm partway through, hopefully they will pop up on next year's list. As part of increasing the variety of what I read in Japanese, I've also been trying to combine it with other things I'm learning, which is what led to reading the Clip Studio Paint book. Maybe they'll help reinforce each other. For other reading, I read 14 volumes of manga and I played through 10 games. The number just gets lower and lower each year, mostly due to spreading these categories of media across more languages.

A few years ago I had a goal of watching 365 ~20-30min segments worth of Japanese audio without Japanese subtitles (so about the length of an episode of TV, but it could be a movie, podcast, video, etc.), again never achieved it, but this year I did! The only issue with this one is that the majority of it was from watching anime. Watching all of Maison Ikoku and Slayers accounts for like ~200 segments of this… There's a few films in there, some random youtube videos, and for the past month I've been trying to listen to more podcasts, but I should increase the variety of what I listen to/watch.

For the past two weeks I started writing in Japanese again. It has definitely deteriorated, but I'll hopefully catch up to and surpass where I used to be. I used to use the site Lang-8, but that site closed down completely now. I didn't realize that, so I unfortunately lost all my old posts there. I am sad about it because among all the more regular writing practice it contained many years of fiction and reviews, but it is what it is… Now I'm using LangCorrect, and it's been working about the same as Lang-8 did. I know there's a more direct Lang-8 successor in Nyan-8, but I haven't tried making the jump, maybe down the line I'll split with using one site for Japanese and one for Spanish, but for now I'm just going to randomly alternate on LangCorrect. Maybe I'll try doing some blog posts on this feed with Japanese translations, but there'll obviously be a disclaimer that it'll likely have a lot of errors.

Last year I teased that I may have the opportunity to start speaking Japanese, but that unfortunately didn't pan out. Rather than be discouraged, I instead just signed up for online Japanese speaking lessons. I've done it for about a month, an hour a week, so not particularly intensive, but it's infinitely better than the nothing I used to do. I'm struggling a lot, especially with having a naturally flowing conversation. This is why I need to watch more media with more everyday style conversation. I might be able to say a sentence here or there in a vacuum, but I have a hard time building on/responding to what another person says. Also even with stuff like 相槌, I have trouble knowing which makes sense to use and when to use it. I'm still very early, so we'll see how it goes over 2026.

For next year, I don't have any concrete goals, but I want Japanese along with Spanish to be my most studied languages. I feel like if I really hunker down and hone my writing/speaking skills, I'll be in a spot where I can more passively learn these languages(kind of like where my Japanese reading is currently) and put the more actual learning effort into my other languages. For how much I did, I didn't really add that many new words to my anki deck. And even with these, it's mostly name readings, historical events/people, etc. Not strictly words per se. This is a picture of my Japanese vocab Anki deck stats for the year.



Spanish



As you will see, Spanish had a lot of parallels with my Japanese learning. I read a lot, watched a lot (though not as much), started writing again(though not for as long), and started speaking again (though not for the first time like Japanese).

I read 7 books in Spanish this year! A big jump from only reading 2 last year. Different from Japanese, I'll list them out and explain my experience reading them since I feel there was a more interesting narrative that formed as I went through them. (Note: page counts are from bookmeter, but since I read digitally I don't know how accurate they are)



Overall, I think the books I read in Spanish were more difficult than the ones I read in Japanese. The main thing I liked in terms of language learning here was their complexity in terms of messing with time and expectations where I'd really have to read the sentences. Sometimes I feel like I use what I'm expecting to happen to understand the sentence rather than actually working through the grammar to see what it's actually saying. Since a lot of these explicitly play with that, there were a couple of times where something contradicted what I thought was happening and I would need to reread to understand what was actually being said.

For other reading, I read 26 volumes of fan-translated manga. This was throughout the year, and mostly just a supplement to get some extra Spanish reading in there, even if translation quality can vary wildly. I also finished 5 games with Spanish translations.

In terms of watching, I watched some shows and movies and videos, but I probably didn't reach ~365 30min segments like with Japanese. A big chunk was also just watching Spanish dubs of anime, like I watched all of Slam Dunk and Death Note. I'm also ~70 episodes into Naruto, and it would be funny if next year I hit ~365 purely from just finishing Naruto/Naruto Shippuden lol It's just something that's easy for me to casually do.

For writing, I've barely started using LangCorrect for that, as stated above I'll be randomly alternating with Japanese on there. On Lang-8 I used to do the same post both in Spanish and Japanese, but I think that would sometimes restrain what I'd write in either language, so I think I won't this time. Also the way correction ratios work on this site I don't think it would work as well. Though if I do the thing of translating posts on this blog into Spanish/Japanese those would be written in both languages.

For speaking, I've done the thing that I've been saying I should do and that's been available to me this whole time: just talk to my parents in Spanish. And ouch, I've deteriorated a lot… Trust me, I used to be able to have basic conversations in Spanish! About a decade ago at this point… Hopefully I can get that back with not too much time and go past that. This will technically be more time spent speaking Spanish than Japanese(though not as directed), so let's see if that means it will improve faster too.

For next year, it's pretty much as I explained in the Japanese section, I want Spanish/Japanese to be my most studied languages, with particular focus on writing/speaking.

This is a picture of my Spanish vocab Anki deck stats for the year.



French



Honestly the only thing I really did this year for French was play Clair Obsur: Expedition 33. Oh, I also played a bit of Disgaea 4. I don't think there will be that much difference for next year.

This is a picture of my French vocab Anki deck stats for the year.



Mandarin Chinese



Compared to last year's big jump, it was a pretty quiet year for studying Mandarin Chinese. There were only four big pillars for study (3 games, 1 manhua): Dynasty Warriors Origins(finished), Love Curse(haven't finished yet), Xuan-Yuan Sword: Dance of the Maple Leaves(haven't finished yet), and 百合零距离(finished). If Spanish and Japanese take up my time like I expect, next year will probably be like this for Mandarin Chinese.

This is a picture of my Mandarin Chinese vocab Anki deck stats for the year.



Brazilian Portuguese



This was a slightly more active year for Brazilian Portuguese. I played through the Pixel Remasters for Final Fantasy III and V in Brazilian Portuguese. I also watched a little Hunter x Hunter dubbed. It will probably be about the same next year. Interestingly, after Spanish, this is technically the language where I actually have the most opportunities to speak, but considering how my attention will be divided next year, it's not likely. But you never know!

This is a picture of my Brazilian Portuguese vocab Anki deck stats for the year.



Conclusion



While last year was more equal in terms of studying, this year was pretty lopsided in favor of Japanese and Spanish, and it will likely be the same next year. I feel like while it's too early to say, I made some pretty big changes by writing and speaking again, we'll see if that's kept up and how it pays off next year. I mean, we can see now how all the failed reading goals of previous years finally paid off. Will there be any payoffs next year? I just need to keep studying to find out!