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Kuji’s Krazy Log II | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6589 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes  4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 489 of 706 09 May 2014 at 5:53pm | IP Logged | |||||
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To play the devil's advocate, this is where Spanish would be useful. It gives me nearly everything I can't have in Portuguese or Italian.
But definitely do your best not to sacrifice. You're not Japanese, and unlike Khatzumoto you don't seem to want to be. Try to get to know Japanese people interested in world rugby and whatever else you like. Do they need to learn English to stay informed? There might not be all the cool stuff you're used to, but surely there's something? If not, consider starting a Japanese space about rugby or another interest, like maybe a facebook group or a twitter account. FWIW, before I learned how to watch football online I would watch it with some Finnish music in my earphones. That's not ideal but it's better than nothing. And you understand these sports better than I understood football back then. Also, I'm still jealous that Forlán now plays in your city and you could easily keep up with his Japanese career :P 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5254 days ago 2241 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 490 of 706 09 May 2014 at 6:48pm | IP Logged | |||||
Yes! Exactly! You've hit it. The languages are the key to unlocking another world. I've been an expat before, albeit still within the English-speaking world. I am an expat, so to speak, right now. Nowadays, with technology, it is easy to lock yourself into a virtual expat world thousands of miles away from "home". There are 100 million people in Japan and they can't all be into anime and transforming robots. There must be people who like to hike, clean beaches, fish, surf, appreciate art, cinema and music, do amateur theater or even get together to play rugby. Speaking Japanese is the key to that world. With my travels, I like to be able to be a part of the culture, to experience it, even if only briefly.That's one of the main reasons I learn languages, to be able to do and experience things in a way I can't do in English. Sometimes people move here to the VI from the mainland and try to resist the local culture and rhythms of life. They try to impose their will and their way on the island. They "fight" the island. The island always wins. It's bigger. It's been here longer. These are the people who won't go "tramping" at Carnaval or hang out in the festival village eating callaloo and johnnycakes, drinking maube. They can't get used to being without air conditioning, carpet and "bed, bath and beyond". They end up not being very happy and move back to the mainland in short order. You didn't move to Japan because of a love of Japanese culture, but you're there now. You might discover some aspects of local culture you like and maybe some things about yourself you never knew before in the process, perhaps even outside of spectator sports. Edit: Portal do Rugby- noticias Everything Rugby in Portuguese, for international news scroll down and click. Admittedly, it's not as huge in the Lusophone world as futebol. Edited by iguanamon on 09 May 2014 at 10:02pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5158 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 491 of 706 09 May 2014 at 9:59pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Nice to have you back! That was good news for my Friday!
I wish I could speak of myself with the clarity iguanamon does. I don't know myself that well, actually I have opposite feelings on the topics he discusses and I am constantly looking out for balance (and I am totally interested in reading about self-improvement, iguanamon, I want to read on it in my target languages if that's possible, so the more well-known the author the higher the odds they got a German or Russian translation, for instance =D ). I don't really now if I'm obsessed or not. I look obsessed, from my posts, from my struggle to study no matter the odds. I also have other interests, though, and I'm equally dedicated to them. I just can't stand idle time. Even 'relaxing' is some time I put up for relaxing. Just letting be driven by what the consumption society tells me is what drives me mad. Namely: watching TV for no purpose. No special film or show I like, no foreign language practicing, this 'let's just watch TV to kill time' is what drives me mad. Sleeping beats it by large. So, I start itching when I don't study because I have to do other stuff that isn't actually being of help, like waiting in line, getting stuck on traffic. I just should be less obsessed about that 'time loss'. Like I said, I have other interests. What makes language learning the ideal activity for a civil servant that has to stay long at the office but has a lot of time to kill is that opportunity to multitask that makes me keep going and doesn't allow me to finish the day with burnout thanks to hours of random surfing the web (yes, this would happen everyday if I wasn't doing healthier activities such as studying bits of languages). Funny how I realized that I seem not to agree with iguanamon in principle, but in practice I'm doing exactly according to his philosophy. I'm multitracking and I'm enjoying the way more than ever. The A1-A2 stage for me is the most annoying one. It's enjoying materials in a level you can both enjoy and benefit from that makes me happy. I've reached this stage for all of my languages now and I'm learning languages while studying about other cultures - which is the ultimate goal, it's just that you don't go on studying cultures through textbooks - it would lead to the compilation of stuff even more stereotypically. That's why we study the language and try to have access to the same 'culture' its owners do. I'm far from being thirsty for more interesting linguistical phenomena: reading books that cover a wide range of languages helped that. I say: it's not books about language techniques. It's this type of books where the authors goes to their specific experiences with this and that language and how these helped enrich their lives. A good one in Portuguese is "As línguas divertem", by Oswaldo Ballarin, which unfortunately may be out of print. He is an amateur, he wrote it before the internet age or HTLAL, but he didn't waste time boasting about himself. He focused on how he felt. An option is the well-known Die Abenteuer Sprache by Hans Joachim Störig, which I read as "A aventura das línguas" :) NowI know that what drove me mad in most of 2012 and 2013 was having 4 languages at a beginner which I couldn't enjoy that much. I still think I should take the most out of textbook's crutches and treasure maps instead of just listening in the background in the hope it will 'click' eventually - it may never 'click' for me if I'm not actively studying. But now I know how to detect when it is better to start with native materials and what to use. Smaller quantities when I'm still struggling, that's the point. So, when I start Estonian, even if I'm not going to start using native materials right away - I think it's useless when you have no clue about syntax and therefore can't even associate translated word to translation - I will do it sooner than I did for German, which is actually sooner than I did with Russian, than with Georgian, Norwegian, Chinese and so on. All this to say that those changes in techniques allowed me to increase 'fun' while I also made improvements. I still understand, though, that at an early point I have to make greater efforts for long-term rewards and I have no problem with that and with giving up immediate delightmentes, but this is a catholic country, so...I had such a struggle with the Georgian grammar before I could enjoy anything Georgian. Spent a lot of time mostly due to having bad resources, badly-written ones even for scholars. This is something you didn't face with Japanese nor did I with Chinese or Russian, for instance, but all this is about acquiring experience. Before having trouble with Georgian, I tried other languages for which I had materials of all sorts and still didn't know how to use them effectively, so, I did learn something in between. Too much on kuji's thread, maybe I just wanted to write to a larger audience...I'm still on topic I hope, time management, learning strategies. Being studying so many languages, don't expect me to be in love with all those cultures. So, I identify with you at this respect. But I do learn to love what I learn! Taste is repertory, you know. I was so much resistent to much of the contemporary Chinese culture and the whole hanzi issue, but I kept working because I knew the rewarding would be access to timeless wisdom, moral reflections. And I had it, for example, in a great textbook named 'Everyday Chinese Fables and Anedoctes' and it turned out that I also learned to enjoy contemporary Chinese culture and even Singaporean one =D Much of this was thanks to cultural notes within my textbooks, my video courses from CCTV and from Chineseclass101, but it would make no sense to just group all those notes and compile a book out of it, almost like 'culture fortune cookies', if you get what I mean. My goal is about becoming a better person. Language learning is broadening my universe, learning about others and turning myself into a less egotic person. It is not a tool per se. I studied languages before and was too self-centered, wanted to have the skills and read and watch what I wanted and talk to people from everywhere and that was it. I had to re-learn a lot of things in life and it was this change of paradigm that allowed me for a comeback to languages that is turning my life into a better thing while not damaging other areas (I hope). Just like the other stuff I'd read in other to be a more understanding person had been there all the time but just wouldn't sink in. It's all a matter of time time, after all. I learned to be less serious about myself and not to judge others, and I'm struggling to put into practice what I've learned. I also learned to put less pressure on what I'm doing. Learned to stop using language learning as a crutch while other life pillars were weak. Now specifically the professional pillar is still unsatisfactorily set but I learned not to use languages either as a crutch or as an excuse. If I'm not studying for a more 'self-enlightening' job it's not because languages, or fitness, or cultural reading are hindering it. At the same context, I shouldn't keep myself from doing what I love to just because I still haven't dealt with this main issue. It's noticeable that I learned to be more self-disciplined and thus became better at activities that require discipline, small tasks being done for long results: language learning, fitness, healthy nutrition, balance in life. I'm glad I did, because I used to be bad at those activities as well as activities that require initiative and/or depend on approval of the others. Now I'm only having trouble with the latter. I still have to start writing, to study for a better civil servant job, learn to cook and do some bricolage for instance, but I firmly believe what's said at the song Há tempos , by the Brazilian rockband Legião Urbana: Disciplina é liberdade. When you are disciplined with minor tasks that keep the train moving you don't have to stop it just to fix the rails now and then: you can keep on expanding the railway limitlessly. Right now I believe I'm good at doing what I do, at maintaining the rails. I just think I should work harder on expanding the railways, but these are different skills as far as I can tell. It's not the maintenance that is hindering me from doing expansions. On the contrary, I haven't been more free to start than I am now. I just have to stop procrastinating on those skills the way I stopped procrastinating on the ones I'm working on one day. (If you want it's ok that I move this to my own log, I just didn't want to cut the text). 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| sabotai Senior Member United States Joined 5874 days ago 391 posts - 489 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Japanese, Korean, French | Message 492 of 706 10 May 2014 at 6:33pm | IP Logged | |||||
As far as "dedicated study time" goes, this is where I am too. I can only muster up about 30-60 minutes a day of intensive study per language. What I include in that are activities like intensive reading, "doing" an Assimil lesson, etc. Anything that makes me feel tired after doing it for ~15 minutes = "dedicated study time" to me. If you're looking to increase the time you spend with a language without it feeling like study, you've already touched on it. Do things in the language that interest you. I know, that sounds a lot easier than it is. For me, one of my main reasons for learning Korean is to understand movies and variety shows. I do a good deal of "bloodhound" listening (as Iversen calls it) in Korean. I'll look up words that jump out at me. While this might not be very efficient, it doesn't feel like I'm studying the language, and like I said, I can only muster up the energy to do about 30-60 minutes of intensive activities a day per language. So I'm not taking time away from "dedicated study time" to do this.
I went back to the first post of your first log where you said that you didn't like Japanese, but decided to learn it because you live in Japan and felt you had to. I don't know if you still feel that way, but if so, there aren't any easy answers. Doing anything because you feel you have to and not because you want to is always going to feel like a grind. I suppose the "easiest" answer would be that you need to find ways to trick yourself into wanting to learn it or trick yourself into doing things that make you learn it without realizing your learning it. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| g-bod Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5974 days ago 1485 posts - 2002 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, German | Message 493 of 706 12 May 2014 at 7:29pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Great to see you back Kuji, I'd wondered where you'd been!
I think that when you are a beginner in a language, the only thing you can really do is hit the study materials. If you love the actual process of studying languages for the sake of it, this is a happy time, but if not then there is always going to be a certain amount of discipline involved. However, your Japanese is no longer in the beginner zone any more. You can make conversation and watch TV. You can read some stuff, even if it is still a bit of a pain. Maybe it's time to pack the study materials away for a little bit and just maintain your level by using the language. You don't have to do anything epic, just pay attention to the language that is happening around you every day and interact with it where you can. Keep watching TV. Make it a habit to hit the Japanese sports pages before you hit the English ones. Plan your next holiday with a Japanese guide book. Stop ignoring advertising in public spaces. Listen to other people's conversations! Start studying Japanese again when there is a very specific problem with the language that you want/need to solve. Surely the main reason for you to be learning Japanese is that it will make your life as an expat in Japan easier, so you will encounter specific problems worth solving sooner or later. Since I am British, I think following cricket in English is the only proper way to do it. However, since the rugby world cup will be coming to Japan in 2019, I think you have no excuse not to make Japanese your rugby language! 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4839 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 494 of 706 14 May 2014 at 8:49am | IP Logged | |||||
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WOW!!! So many nice replies!
It's nice to be back, but I didn't expect the warm welcomes that I have received. HTLAL really is like a family! I'll try to reply to all; forgive me if I miss some things. @kraemder - Took me a while to reply; sorry about that. I agree; if you are the type of person to obsess over something, then - well - that is probably a good thing as far as learning languages is concerned, because that means you will put in the time necessary to progress. I've never been one to obsess over anything. Maybe that is my problem. I take a loose approach to everything. I'm not afraid to fail, but at the same time that means I don't try to do my best to avoid it. @serpent - Yeah, it's nice that Forlan is here. I have not been able to go to a Cerezo Osaka game yet, though - even though the stadium is only a 20-minute train ride from where I live. I'm usually in aerobics class when Cerezo is playing. Strange, huh? As for your suggestions, I actually follow some tweets in Japanese and Portuguese, but I think I have the wrong approach. I see it more as "study" and less as "getting my news, but in my target language". I need to make it a lifestyle and less of a study subject. @iguanamon - Hehehe. "The island always wins." I love that line! That could certainly apply here in Japan, too. I'll be honest - there are things about Japan that I don't like, and I often wonder how great things would be if Japan did some things differently. But this ain't the United States. That has been something I've been trying to get myself to accept for years, and I have come a long way, but maybe not enough. There are some things about Japan I need to embrace. @Expugnator - Very interesting post! I think what you said about learning languages to make you a better person, instead of doing it in a self-centered way, is fascinating. I have an obvious need for Japanese, but my approach is this: "Let me learn Japanese so that I can talk with whomever I need to in Japanese, and to understand what people around me say." That is not necessarily a bad goal, but is that enough? There's probably so much more to learning Japanese than simply learning mere words - especially being that I'm living in Japan. I suppose I do need to embrace the culture (for what it is), read the literature, watch the dramas, and - yes - even listen to the music. @sabotai - Thank you for your reply. I'm beginning to see more and more that my problem isn't my study time, but rather how much I use the language outside of my study time (and in most cases, that is zero). As for learning Japanese because I have to... well, I still feel that way. (If I was not in Japan and didn't have a Japanese wife or Japanese friends, I wouldn't learn Japanese. But that's how life works, and that is what makes life interesting.) But I don't dislike the language as much as I used to - if nothing else, because of the fact that nowadays, nothing makes me happier than talking to people in Japanese. I can see the work I've put in when I'm able to carry on a (short) conversation. I do make a lot of mistakes, though, and those are "downers". But overall it is very enjoyable, and that drives me to learn more. @g-bod - Thank you! You provided me with a little tasklist to help me "grow a Japanese lifestyle." Lovely! :) What I'm getting from all of your responses is that it is not enough to simply do some study every day. It is important for me to "live" my languages as well. As for cricket... I'm not even sure why I mentioned it. My cricket interest, for some reason, has gone far down in the last couple of months. But yeah, the Rugby World Cup will be here in five years, so I should get ready! :) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6589 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 495 of 706 14 May 2014 at 11:42am | IP Logged | |||||
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Aww, yes, it seems like your real problem is not liking the culture all that much. But you don't need to embrace (all of) it, just accept. The USA is far from perfect, you're just used to it :P Try to find reasons for things you don't approve.
Definitely make twitter part of your routine for catching up with news. And consider tweeting something yourself to practise writing. Especially your Japanese clearly appears to be in need of active use. As for Forlán, it's not only about visiting matches, but also keeping up with the news etc. Edited by Serpent on 14 May 2014 at 11:44am 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4839 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 496 of 706 16 May 2014 at 6:13am | IP Logged | |||||
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I wanted to post about my trying to "develop a Japanese lifestyle" and use the language more in my daily life. But I wanted to clear something up first.
I get the impression that, when people read my log, when they see that I talk about "study", that I mean that I'm going through textbooks or grammars. I think I haven't made it clear what I consider study. I consider study to be time periods when I am looking up EVERYTHING and trying to learn it. For example, nowadays in my daily Japanese study hour on the train, I'm reading some short Japanese folk tales from the Hukumusume web site. I look up every single word I don't know, choose some interesting ones to put into Anki, and then I read the story over and over again until I can read it and understand it in real time. (Sometimes the stories come with audio, in which case I also listen to the audio over and over until I can understand it in real time.) Simple process, but this can take between one to two weeks - if I work on it every day. I usually don't work on it every day; I work on it every other day, and use other days to do writing, maybe a little bit from my intermediate etc. - you know, the multi-track approach. So I might be working with one story for up to a month. And this is a story with perhaps seven or eight paragraphs. Imagine if I had a novel! It would take me a couple of years! Anyway, that is what I consider "study time". I suppose study time for me is things like intensive reading or listening, while extensive reading and listening activities are not counted as study. I don't consider watching TV to be study, because I don't look up unknown words. If I understand it, I understand it. If I don't, I just let it go. Not efficient, but that's why it's not study. For Portuguese, I do work with a textbook (DLI) more often, but not every day. Sometimes in my study hour, I will intensively go through an article or listen to a Portuguese-learning podcast, or write a short journal. But - other than times when Brazilian music pops up on my Walkman - lately I don't do ANY extensive activities in Portuguese. This obviously takes more work on my part; I can literally roll out of bed in the morning and get some Japanese in my ear, but getting some Portuguese exposure requires me to get some media on my Walkman and play it, or sit my butt down in front of a computer and make myself go to a website and listen to radio or watch video. Work, yes, but if I'm going to get better at Portuguese, this is what I need to start doing. But for the time being, Portuguese is all study. It's okay now because I'm still a beginner, but I do need to add more non-study activities. Anyway, I just wanted to clear that up because I'm not very eloquent. Study for me is intensive activites (not just textbooks), and extensive activities are not included in that. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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