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Evita’s Mix of Languages | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Evita Tetraglot Senior Member Latvia learnlatvian.info Joined 6545 days ago 734 posts - 1036 votes  Speaks: Latvian*, English, German, Russian Studies: Korean, Finnish | Message 129 of 236 18 July 2014 at 8:43pm | IP Logged |
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Today was another fun day at the World Choir Games - I got to see and hear MayTree. Apparently they're one of the best acapella groups in Korea. I must admit I hadn't looked them up before going, I wanted to be surprised and boy was I surprised... I had expected a choir after all, not a five people group. But their singing style was very cool. Too bad they only performed 4 songs. I didn't know the first one but the second one was Hanson's MMMBop. They covered it so well that it sounded almost like the original even though they were singing a capella. This was a song from my teenage years so I knew it quite well, I was really very surprised that they had chosen it. The third song was "Turn the beat around", another old song. And the fourth one - can you guess? - it was Gangnam Style! LOL. I would have studied the lyrics if I had known they would be singing it but anyway, it was a big hit with the public.
MayTree were the last performers for the day and it looked like they were in a hurry so I didn't talk with them much, I only said "노래하는 걸 아주 좋아했어요" to one girl and one guy and the guy said that my Korean is very good. I think every Korean I've met has said this to me but that's probably because they have really low expectations. Either that or they are commenting on my accent, in which case it makes more sense because I do know how to pronounce words correctly. Another thing worth mentioning is that there was a German choir as well. At first I didn't know they were German because they were singing in English but then the next choir was from Poland and I heard the singers speaking German behind me while we were all listening to the Polish choir. So I made a comment and told them (in German) that I'd liked their singing and so we spoke for a bit. I'm happy to say that my German flowed pretty quickly, if not always perfectly correctly. I think the German classes and all my other German-related activities have helped me finally activate this language again. It was a good feeling. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Evita Tetraglot Senior Member Latvia learnlatvian.info Joined 6545 days ago 734 posts - 1036 votes Speaks: Latvian*, English, German, Russian Studies: Korean, Finnish | Message 130 of 236 20 July 2014 at 10:40am | IP Logged |
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It seems my desire to watch Korean dramas goes in cycles. A while ago I was watching a lot but for the last couple of weeks I've been watching very little. I just don't feel like starting anything new.
I didn't have a lot of time for studying this week because of the World Choir Games but I did manage to finish lesson 5 and start lesson 6 of the Russian Korean textbook. I also kept up with Anki (sort of). I thought some more about letting go of the vocabulary deck and I decided not to do it yet. I browsed Gmarket for some books and I looked at some previews and there were so many words I didn't know, it's almost discouraging. I'm not ready yet to dive into native materials and improve my vocabulary that way so Anki it is. Yesterday I ordered both Ewha level 2 books from Gmarket and also a book called "Mi planta de naranja-lima" by Jose Mauro de Vasconcelos. It was a random book I chose from the list of books meant for children in grades 3-6. I haven't read it but I downloaded the Spanish ebook. I plan to use it in case I don't understand the Korean translation. By the way, the three books cost 35 thousand won and the delivery cost 41 thousand. It sucks that Korea is so far from here. I always write about what I did but here's what I haven't been doing: 1) Learning the names of Korean celebrities. I remember Korean names best if I read them in Korean, not in English. But I don't read news articles in Korean so... Hmm. Maybe I should make an Anki deck for this? 2) Reading Twitter in Korean. I always forget about this, it doesn't seem important. 3) Working with Hanja. I haven't added any new cards to my Hanja deck in more than a month. I should remedy that quickly. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Warp3 Senior Member United States forum_posts.asp?TID= Joined 5528 days ago 1419 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Korean, Japanese | Message 131 of 236 20 July 2014 at 2:34pm | IP Logged |
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Romanization of names in Korean is so seemingly random, I've always tried my best to
actively avoid romanized names when possible. A good example of this is "Jung" which usually means 정 (jeong) when used in names, but I've seen it used for 중 as well since that is the official revised romanization for that syllable block (even though "Joong" is a bit more common to try to avoid confusion). I've noticed that most names seem to latch onto the older romanization systems (probably out of habit since those versions have been used for so long) but not always. The other issue are different names that romanize the same. For example, Yoona is a common romanization for both 윤아 and 유나 (both of which are in use as names). Thus people who read only English K-pop news articles may not realize that Yoona from SNSD (윤아) and Yoona from AOA (유나) don't actually have the same name as they are spelled differently in Korean (but sound the same, so they are romanized the same). 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Evita Tetraglot Senior Member Latvia learnlatvian.info Joined 6545 days ago 734 posts - 1036 votes Speaks: Latvian*, English, German, Russian Studies: Korean, Finnish | Message 132 of 236 28 July 2014 at 10:24am | IP Logged |
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I did a lot of stuff last week both for German and Korean, mostly the usual stuff. I got working on my German textbook again, I want to finish it in August before my German classes end, and the same with Warum Nicht. I'm up to 4x12 now.
I also started adding the Latvian translations to the German word list I worked on several months ago. It's 2000 words so adding the translations will take some time but I also want to do this before the classes end so that I can make an Anki deck out of it and show it to my teacher. As for Korean, I reviewed some grammar and did some more work on my Anki sentence deck. I also read some song lyrics, my favorite new song being 안재현 - 그게 너였다, but the lyrics are not translated anywhere so I'm having difficulties understanding them. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Evita Tetraglot Senior Member Latvia learnlatvian.info Joined 6545 days ago 734 posts - 1036 votes Speaks: Latvian*, English, German, Russian Studies: Korean, Finnish | Message 133 of 236 04 August 2014 at 10:28am | IP Logged |
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I received the books I had ordered on Friday. I can see that the Ewha books are not meant for self-study, there's very little English in them - only the grammar explanations, some vocabulary and one text translation per chapter. Most exercises and dialogues are only in Korean, even the instructions. It's going to be a challenge for me to work through it but not too difficult, I hope, since I already know most of the vocabulary and grammar presented in the book.
I have three grammar book series I want to go through now: 1) The Russian grammar books (3) 2) Elementary Korean/Continuing Korean (2) 3) Ewha Korean (many books, six levels) That's a lot of books. I'm not sure how I will go about prioritizing them. So far I've been working on the Russian book the most, I'm already halfway through the first one. The Ewha books are the most difficult but they are the only books that are real paper books so I can work on them even when I'm not in front of a computer. Hmm. Good news about Anki - I finally got rid of my backlog. I've increased the number of new cards to 5 a day now and increased the starting ease from 220% to 230%. The number of total active cards in my deck is 3460 now. I would like to add more new words quicker but every time I do that the reviews get out of hand. Still, the more words I know, the easier it is to memorize new ones so I'm persevering. By the way, I've found a new drama to follow - Marriage, not Dating. It's a romantic comedy and I think it does both parts (the romance and the comedy, particularly the comedy) very well. I recommend it to everyone. I caught up to episode 8 quickly and when episode 9 came out I watched all of it without subtitles (because subtitles weren't available yet). I'm happy to say that I understood almost everything that was going on. Not all the conversations obviously but at least the major plot points. It's nice to see that my listening comprehension is progressing. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Evita Tetraglot Senior Member Latvia learnlatvian.info Joined 6545 days ago 734 posts - 1036 votes Speaks: Latvian*, English, German, Russian Studies: Korean, Finnish | Message 134 of 236 08 August 2014 at 1:18pm | IP Logged |
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Sehen Sie sich an, was für einen Schatz ich gefunden habe:
FanFiktion.de Ich bin schon seit 10 Jahren ein Mitglied von fanfiction.com, aber ich wusste nicht, dass es auch eine deutsche Seite gibt. Das ist einfach super toll wahnsinnig. Ich habe viele Geschichten über meine Lieblingsserien auf Englisch gelesen, bevor ich mit dem Koreanischen anfing, und jetzt kann ich dasselbe auf Deutsch machen. Na ja, manche Serien haben nicht so viele Geschichten, aber Harry Potter hat viele Tausende. Da kann ich schon bestimmt etwas für meinen Geschmack finden. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Evita Tetraglot Senior Member Latvia learnlatvian.info Joined 6545 days ago 734 posts - 1036 votes Speaks: Latvian*, English, German, Russian Studies: Korean, Finnish | Message 135 of 236 11 August 2014 at 11:50am | IP Logged |
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I didn't do much textbook studying last week, I somehow didn't feel like it. I did listen to some podcasts occasionally and keep up with Anki.
As for the weekend, I spent a lot of it reading a story on that German website. It has about 100,000 words in total and I'm already 2/3 through it. True, it's not the best literature and it was boring in some places so I didn't read everything carefully, but for learning purposes it's very good. At the beginning I read the story mostly intensively but then switched to a mostly extensive approach. As expected, adjectives are the words I have to look up the most. Overall I'm starting to feel really comfortable with German again - as evidenced by my previous post (in German) which may not have perfect grammar but which I could write quickly enough. Now the only substantial problem I have left is the specific vocabulary of my work field. That won't be covered in my German classes (or by any textbooks) so I'll have to figure out something else. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Evita Tetraglot Senior Member Latvia learnlatvian.info Joined 6545 days ago 734 posts - 1036 votes Speaks: Latvian*, English, German, Russian Studies: Korean, Finnish | Message 136 of 236 18 August 2014 at 10:49am | IP Logged |
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It feels like I've been in a vacation mode regarding my languages for a second straight week. It was caused partly by my feeling a little sick and partly by simply wishing to read some fanfictions (in English, not German) instead of studying. I figured there was no reason not to indulge myself since I don't want the studying to become a duty, I want it to stay fun. That means I need to take breaks.
That's not to say that I didn't do anything last week. I'm still keeping up with Anki and I have finally reached the 3500 word mark. Of course, I don't know all of them well but that is still a lot of words. At this point, I had expected to understand more dialogue in dramas than I do so I've been trying to read some of the scripts I've collected over time. However, it doesn't do much good just to read them, I also need to know the meaning and therefore I must watch or rewatch the drama whose script I am reading. I've tried it with Giant before but that drama always seems so boring. So last weekend I decided to work with You're Beautiful. It was one of the first dramas I watched about two years ago and I liked it quite well. So yesterday I worked through about 5 minutes of the first episode. I found some nice words to add to Anki, like 탓, 끝장, 회복하다, 녹화, 무지, 군소리, 웬만하다. I paid attention to the grammar as well but only to get a sense of what is unfamiliar. As I read more, I'm sure I'll notice the grammar constructions that come up often and that I haven't learned yet, and I will study them then. I also registered at Interpals. I thought it was time I got a Korean penpal and I've indeed exchanged a couple of messages with one guy from Korea. But I don't know, it seems more like an obligation than something I enjoy. We'll see how it goes. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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