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The Awesome Difficulty of Korean, Finnish | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Evita Tetraglot Senior Member Latvia learnlatvian.info Joined 6544 days ago 734 posts - 1036 votes  Speaks: Latvian*, English, German, Russian Studies: Korean, Finnish | Message 481 of 559 21 July 2013 at 10:22pm | IP Logged | ||
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I spent most of yesterday and today reorganizing my Anki vocabulary deck for the benefit of those who will download it in the future. I wanted to reorder the cards so that typical beginner-level words would appear first. Of course, most of the first few hundred words already fit this description but not all of them (for example, there was 후회하다 (to regret) which I got from TTMIK level 1). On the other hand, words like 집 and 나 should have been there but they weren't because I simply forgot to add them. That's why I thought it would be a good idea to reorder the necessary cards.
Reordering means changing the 'Created' date on notes, and I found a nice little Anki add-on for that. I followed the instructions in the description and it worked without any problems. As for reordering itself, I looked at several Memrise courses to find any beginner-level words I might have missed, and I found about 70, many of them food-related. Looks like I won't have to add any new words to Anki in the next couple of weeks. I'm still watching LSS but it makes me roll my eyes so much I can barely stand it. If it wasn't for the language studying aspect of it all, I would probably drop it. But today I watched some Secret Garden again, it seems I will never tire of it. Oh and thanks to the SG script, I finally figured out what it is the characters in various dramas are saying when the subtitles say "I forgot" but it doesn't sound anything like 잊다. It turns out they are saying '깜빡했어'. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Evita Tetraglot Senior Member Latvia learnlatvian.info Joined 6544 days ago 734 posts - 1036 votes Speaks: Latvian*, English, German, Russian Studies: Korean, Finnish | Message 482 of 559 24 July 2013 at 10:23am | IP Logged | ||
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Good news - I'm back into my rhythm and the studying is going well. The Anki backlog is practically gone and I finally added some new sentences to my sentence deck this weekend so it feels like everything is back to normal again.
I have only 9 days left on Haru Korean so yesterday I finally went there and wrote some sentences and studied the sentences written by others. There's really such a wealth of information, I'm a fool for ignoring the site for so long. I'm going to study the sentences every day for the next 9 days and I'll probably buy a new subscription for one or two months later this year. Initially I thought 20 dollars a month is a lot but if you write 10-20 sentences a day and get them all corrected (plus have access to all the other sentences), well, it's not such a bad deal. You have to make a commitment though and make sure you have enough time to spend on the site. I think I wrote about 10 sentences on HK yesterday and I did it during free moments at work, not using any of my resources or even an online dictionary. And the best part is that all of them were technically correct, only one sentence was missing an optional topic particle. When I think about how long it took me to write a single sentence half a year ago and how little effort I spent writing them yesterday, I can really see how far I've come. As you know, I haven't practiced writing specifically, I've just been reviewing grammar while making the Anki sentence cards and trying to catch familiar constructions while watching dramas. It's been a good (and fun) strategy for me so I'm going to keep doing that. In case you're interested, here are the most complex sentences I wrote (corrected): 한국 집에 있는 문하고 유럽 건물에 있는 문은 달라요. (한국 집의 문과 유럽 건물의 문은 서로 다릅니다.) - Doors in Korean houses are different from doors in European buildings. 저는 누가 잃어버린 가방을 발견했어요. - I found a bag that someone had lost. 모든 이름을 다 좋아해요. - I like all names. I was very unsure about the last sentence because - can you believe it? - TTMIK never introduced the word 모든, not even one example sentence in 7 levels. Fortunately I saw one sentence using the 모든 - 다 construction in my grammar book so I tried using it here as well. The construction wasn't explained in the book though so I still don't know what's the deal with the '다', why it is necessary. Maybe it's just an expression. Speaking of dramas, I saw episode 39 of You're The Best, Lee Soon Shin and the main characters finally admitted their attraction to each other and had their first kiss. Can you imagine waiting 39 episodes for that? OMG. Well, hopefully it will be a bit more interesting now. But the thing with watching these long dramas in real time is - I've followed the characters for months, they are familiar and relaxing so I want to watch the episodes even when they are boring or when they employ despicable stalling tactics. I want to know how it all will end. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Evita Tetraglot Senior Member Latvia learnlatvian.info Joined 6544 days ago 734 posts - 1036 votes Speaks: Latvian*, English, German, Russian Studies: Korean, Finnish | Message 483 of 559 26 July 2013 at 3:48pm | IP Logged | ||
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It's going well. I'm keeping up with the Anki reviews and using Haru Korean like I promised. It seems that in order for my Anki workload to seem bearable, I must have less than 90 review cards every day. I had more than that for a while and it may have contributed to my Anki burnout. Since then I've changed my card answering strategy a bit - I try to hit button "1" less and button "4" more. For example, when a new card graduates from "learning" to "review" and I review it for the first time, I never hit "Again" even if I don't remember the translation. I just pause the reviews for a bit and spend 10-20 seconds committing the word to my memory again. Basically, I don't always answer very truthfully but I think it's not a problem because I don't have a deadline by which I have to have those words memorized. If I see a word and my reaction is "I know I've seen it at least 7 times but I can't recall the meaning at the moment" and if the next review would be in less than a month then I'd probably press "Good". But the next time when I see the same card, if I still can't quite remember it then I'd press "Again". Then I'd have three reviews in a row (like I have defined for relearning cards) and the next review would be in 10 days or so. This way the whole process is more spaced out and less stressful and it works well for me. Eventually I do learn all the words. Oh and if the review card count still goes over 90, I'll reduce the number of new words for a while. I don't want to risk a burnout like that again.
A few days ago I spent about half an hour on google trying to find a Korean song I heard on the radio. Unfortunately I failed. The only words I could remember from the song were "가지 마, 떠나지 마, 사랑해" and it turns out lots of songs have these words. I've been listening to the radio hoping to hear this song again but no luck so far. As for Finnish, I was determined to study from my textbook again this week but since my HK membership is expiring soon I had to change my priorities. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Evita Tetraglot Senior Member Latvia learnlatvian.info Joined 6544 days ago 734 posts - 1036 votes Speaks: Latvian*, English, German, Russian Studies: Korean, Finnish | Message 484 of 559 27 July 2013 at 10:42pm | IP Logged | ||
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I just watched the first 12 minutes of the new episode of LSS (for which subtitles aren't available yet) and I understood 70-80% of the dialogue, enough to understand or guess what the characters were talking about. I'm so happy about that. Of course, the dialogues were easy and I had a lot of context to work with but still, it feels like a major achievement. Maybe in 6 months I'll be able to understand most modern dramas to this level, then I can stop using subtitles. Or maybe I can try doing it sooner. Ah, I don't know, on one hand I can't wait to stop needing subtitles, but on the other hand it doesn't help much to watch something if you don't understand it. I've been progressing fine watching dramas with subtitles so I should just keep doing that.
In other news, I did TTMIK lesson 8x01 today. It was the first "Advanced idiomatic expressions" lesson. This seems like a fun series but it has very little to do with grammar and the expressions themselves were pretty easy. The most difficult thing was trying to understand the lesson itself, I mean the banter between the hosts, because a lot of it was in Korean. I'll need to listen to this lesson several more times just for that reason. It's challenging but it's not too much above my level so I should be able to figure it out eventually. In yet another news, I posted my first One On One question on HK several days ago, and today I finally got the answer on why "부탁드립니다" means "I'm asking you a favor", not "I'm doing you a favor". It turns out that in some cases, 드리다 is used as an honorific expression of 하다. I didn't know that. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Warp3 Senior Member United States forum_posts.asp?TID= Joined 5527 days ago 1419 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Korean, Japanese | Message 485 of 559 28 July 2013 at 4:15pm | IP Logged | ||
I picked up that word from 영웅호걸. It seems to be a good bit more colloquial than 잊다 and seems to be more like the English phrasings of "I just blanked" or "It completely slipped my mind". Based on the meanings of 깜빡 and 깜빡깜빡 (and the usages I've come across), I'm guessing the more literal meaning is implying that the thought in question suddenly vanished from your mind. Edited by Warp3 on 28 July 2013 at 4:16pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Evita Tetraglot Senior Member Latvia learnlatvian.info Joined 6544 days ago 734 posts - 1036 votes Speaks: Latvian*, English, German, Russian Studies: Korean, Finnish | Message 486 of 559 31 July 2013 at 9:04am | IP Logged | ||
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I haven't been studying much, just keeping up with Anki and a bit of HK. I wanted to do more of HK but my heart wasn't into it and it's the kind of intensive studying that I can't do half-heartedly. Who knows, maybe I'll get inspiration tonight or tomorrow, there are still a couple of days left.
I've been watching Spy Myung Wol because my colleague said she liked it. Honestly I don't think it's that good but I'll probably finish it. And I've also started watching The King 2 Hearts which has been on my list for quite some time. It looks promising so far. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Evita Tetraglot Senior Member Latvia learnlatvian.info Joined 6544 days ago 734 posts - 1036 votes Speaks: Latvian*, English, German, Russian Studies: Korean, Finnish | Message 487 of 559 02 August 2013 at 7:25pm | IP Logged | ||
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I got a major surprise today. I checked HK and saw that my subscription had been renewed for another 6 months. I had forgotten I had selected the automatic renewal option. I checked my PayPal account to make sure I hadn't somehow given them over $100 for the 6 months but no, it's the same price as before. I don't know if it's intentional or some kind of mistake but I'm happy about it.
Now that the end of HK is not looming in front of me anymore I can finally spend some time on Finnish again. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Evita Tetraglot Senior Member Latvia learnlatvian.info Joined 6544 days ago 734 posts - 1036 votes Speaks: Latvian*, English, German, Russian Studies: Korean, Finnish | Message 488 of 559 05 August 2013 at 10:00am | IP Logged | ||
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I spent quite a lot of time on languages this weekend. For Korean, some of my focus was on Hanja - I added 5 more characters to my spreadsheet. That's a tiny amount, sure, but before that I had learned only 4 characters so now I know 125% more hehe. I'm using the same book as Warp3, which presents the characters ordered by the number of strokes. I figured it's the best way for me even though I'm not starting with the most common characters. I need to start with the easiest ones. I try to learn the pronunciation and the English meaning of the characters, I don't bother with the Korean meaning.
I also browsed through the books (digital, of course) on Korean I have in Russian. There were a couple books about Chinese characters and I thought maybe it would be better to use one of them but in the end I decided against it because they didn't present the characters in such a systematical manner. Some other Russian books about grammar or the more theoretical aspects of the Korean language looked interesting though. I may examine them in more detail later. I also found 2000 Essential Korean Words for Beginners on Quizlet. It seems to be an excellent vocabulary collection and I'll be going through it and adding the words I don't know yet to my Anki deck. As for Finnish, I finally finished lesson 8 of my textbook and started on lesson 9. The grammar is not new to me but I never really learned to apply it to new words myself so I am reading and rereading the short dialogues that make up most of the lessons and I find them very useful. Adding them to an Anki deck (and test the production) would be even more useful but I don't have time for that now. But the big news is that I'm seriously tackling German again. I haven't decided anything yet but there's a possibility that I could switch jobs in the near future and my new job would involve communicating with Germans so I will spend August trying to revive my German. I've found some links to online German newspapers and I'll be reading them, I've already started. I don't know how I will solve the noun gender problem though, just yesterday I looked up the article for Bildschirm and I've already forgotten it. Maybe I need to get an Anki deck for that. Edited by Evita on 05 August 2013 at 10:01am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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