Inhae's blog

Since I decided to update my blog a little bit more often than once a month and separate topics into different posts, here is the one dedicated to learning Chinese with Genshin and Anki.

Things are going okay but not great. Okay because I am more or less studying Anki regularly (though more less than more this past week…) and not great because it’s been forever since I added new words.

Nod-Krai notebook

Pictures contain drawings and notes about Nod-Krai world quests. Not really spoilers, but if you’re playing the game, it’s best not to try to read what’s written (overall, I think it’s hard to read anyway, but I did cover it when it was too prominent).

I love Nod-Krai more than I can say, it’s probably my second favourite region after Liyue. I already posted pictures of my Nod-Krai notebook in previous posts, but here are some more. I finished the first one (a 48 pages Midori notebook) and I started a second one, still only using a Monami ballpoint pen.

This is the first page of the second notebook. I gave up on the idea of doing special spreads at the beginning, and just started with notes related to whatever quest I was doing at the moment.

I also use this notebook as an opportunity to practice drawing directly in ink, without pencil outline. The main reason is that the Monami pen does not write well on pencil, and I also like the concept of “one notebook, one pen”, so I stopped using marker and pencil.

Taking notes obviously takes time, and I’m not done with exploring the region, but I feel much more confortable doing all the world quests and others in Chinese.

I didn’t have any fomo with the exploration abilities of Natlan characters (I only have Kinich and Citlali), but the special interactions Nod-Krai characters have with the world and the NPCs make them must pulls for me.

I’m drawing and collecting lantern interactions with Flins. Even though he released in Luna 1, I still haven’t gone very far, but I’m getting better at drawing lanterns lol.

Also you can see on this image that there is a lot of see through with the Midori notebook. It bothered me at first, but I got used to it, and now I even like the effect even though it does look a bit messy on the picture.

Collecting intel on NPCs with Nefer is the most fun to me. Again, I would have skipped Nefer normally, but collecting special information on the NPCs and comparing what they say openly to what Nefer knows about them is just too much fun.

I always draw a quick sketch of the character in question, with their name, the intel Nefer has on them, and a summary of the dialogue we have with them. Plus some vocabulary when necessary.

I’m very bad at remembering names, especially in Chinese, so if I don’t draw the characters, I won’t remember who is who in the end. Again it takes a lot of time, and I only have been through 4 of them now. But it’s permanent content, so no stress.

Anki

As for Anki… I’m glad I’m not giving up, but I’m not happy with my reviews.

There are times when I get completely obsessed with the number of new words I learn by day, by months, and how many new words I will have learned in one year. Then I get extremely motivated and think that my life is over if I don’t learn at least x new words per day. I like this feeling a lot, maybe that’s a reason why I loved preparing for the JLPT so much.

But what’s happening now is very strange. On the one hand, I’m very motivated to play Genshin in Chinese, but on the other hand, I have a hard time sitting down at my desk to add new words. The initial goal was to study and add words from the Clink Clank Clash event, and once I’m done, adding words from the Archon Quest. The event released on September 12th, and today, two month later, I only studied half of it.

This is my setup when adding words. I copy the text from the wiki and paste it in Pleco, so I can have access to vocabulary by just hovering the words. I also replay the quest on Bilibili. I like it more than YouTube because the site lets you have the video floating over other windows, and it will always show on top even when Anki is the active window, which is extremely convenient for this setup. I still haven’t found a way to do something similar with YouTube.

I like replaying the quest because it’s easier to remember the words, and it’s more fun to study like that.

It’s so easy to add words with Pleco, I really have no excuses for not doing it.

As for my reviews…

I did a great job at starting a new streak last month and everything is falling apart again. I guess that’s because I’m not adding new words, so I’m always looking at the same sentences again and again, and I start wondering what’s even the point.

We are exactly at the second phase of Luna 2, so here are some goals.

• Complete the event Clink Clank Clash by adding all the new words to Anki (I won’t be doing the same for the current Sumeru event)
• Go through Archon Quest chapter 1 (I won’t add all the new words from the AQ because it’s so long, only words I find interesting or not too specialised).
• Complete the remaining world quests and bring the exploration to 80% if possible.
• Continue working on the characters’ special interactions.

I’m curious about the content of Luna 3 and whether we’ll get a map expansion or not. For now, I’m really enjoying the game at the moment, much more than I did during Natlan.

Now time to Anki! Have a good week 🍁

About

I’m learning Japanese, Korean and Chinese to read mystery novels and play video games in these languages.

Learning languages has always been one of my favourite hobbies, but I’m not a social person, I don’t like to meet new people and make friends, this is just not me. I keep hearing that languages are meant for communication, that we have to actively use them, talk with natives, etc. and for a long time, I thought it was weird to learn languages just to read books, with zero interest in communication.

Now I don’t really care what people think, and this blog helped me a lot to stop doubting myself and just do what I enjoy doing.