I’ve been learning Cantonese lately so my Japanese exposure is limited to my SRS, Takamiy’s voice and some music from time to time. Sure enough my Japanese ability has started to fall off. Not so severely that I can’t function but still I’m getting a little rusty after 2 or 3 months. But Cantonese is so much fun! Anyway, I’m striking a compromise from this week going: one day for each language, alternatively. That should do the trick, hopefully. Now back to Pimsleur Cantonese, I’m on lesson 13.
Is this effective? I have been learning Japanese on and off some time, but due to the whole Korean wave (music, dramas, movies) and the abundance of Koreans in comparison to Japanese people where I live, my desire to learn Korean has grew quite big. However, I am really not sure if I can handle both at once, so I am interested in how your method works.
On an interesting note, my mother-tongue is Cantonese, and I find that a lot of Japanese vocabulary (Chinese-borrowed reading) is read alike Cantonese, moreso than Mandarin. Some prime examples: kantan, jishin, denwa… haha so a lot of the times I can sort of guess the J-pronounciation by screwing my Cantonese around a bit! I’m glad you’re learning the language, because there’s a whole different, unique culture associated with Cantonese and its speakers that is different compared to Mandarin Chinese. And when you have sufficient Cantonese, Mandarin is relatively attainable afterwards!
Yeah, I noticed a lot of Japanese “on” readings are more similar to the Cantonese versions than to the Mandarin one. Fascinating. I think it’s harder than Mandarin though. I took a little Mandarin a long time ago and I can still figure out the gist of what people are saying, but it’s not so easy even after a year of learning Cantonese. More homophones, I guess.